Head Over Tattered Sneakers
by CelticGrace
Summary: "Trust is hard to come by on the streets... You trust the wrong person and you end up dead." Zaeed Massani rescues young Bex Shepard from the gang that wants them both dead, just as he and Vido Santiago are on the verge of starting a gang of their own, if they can ever stop arguing about it.
1. Chapter 1

**Bioware owns the Mass Effect universe and all characters within. If you don't recognize a character, it's probably mine.**

**Beta: the wondrous and brilliant pixelatrix**

**Written for NaNoWriMo 2014. Posting as chapters are completed and polished, hoping that this will drive me to finish it.**

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><p>Zaeed Massani wasn't overly fond of most children, but at the moment, he downright despised the lot of them. He'd been woken from an already-restless sleep by four of the little buggers breaking into his flat. Three of them, all boys in their early teens, were currently cleaning out his safe and gun locker. The fourth, a little blond girl who couldn't have been more than five or six, had been left to <em>guard<em> him. He would have found the situation laughable, except the little half-pint was a biotic, and he was currently caught in a powerful stasis field.

He was surprised when she dropped the field after only a couple of minutes, whispered "I'm... I didn' want... I'm sorry," and bolted for the front door. He quickly shook his limbs and cracked his neck before he retrieved a pistol, hidden in a secret panel of the liquor cabinet.

"All right you little tossers," he growled as he walked into his office. "I'm giving you until the count of three to drop everything and get the hell out of my flat."

The oldest and biggest of the boys, only an inch or two shorter than Zaeed, turned and took two steps toward him. "And what'll you do if we decide to stay, old man?"

Zaeed rolled his eyes and closed the distance between them before he violently headbutted the bastard. The other two quickly dropped what they were holding and ran, leaving their fallen _leader_ crumpled on the floor.

_Bloody kids._

Zaeed pulled the kid to his feet and chucked him out of the office window onto the fire escape landing. It would give him a good scare when he regained consciousness, and if he happened to fall, no real harm done, falling from one floor up.

A sharp knock on the front door a few minutes later roused Zaeed from checking his gun inventory.

_Now what?_

Looking at the security monitor, he muttered a string of curses before opening the door.

"Evening, officers," he said as cordially as possible to the two uniforms standing in the hallway. He didn't need the cops on his case, not right now. "Anything I can do for you?"

"Do you live here, sir?" one of the officers asked. "Couple of kids just came into the station, claiming some tattooed guy broke into their place, brandishing a pistol. They said he knocked out their older brother and their little sister is missing."

_Clever little bastards._

Zaeed sighed deeply before replying. "Actually, officer, the whole lot of them, _little sister_ too, broke in here and were clearing out my goddamn safe. Yeah, the girl ran off, but she did that all on her own, and yeah I knocked out the ringleader. But if those four are siblings, I'm the bloody King of France."

"Can we see some ID, sir?"

Zaeed grudgingly stepped back to let the two men into his flat and went to find his omni-tool.

Satisfied he was telling the truth about the night's events, one of the offers asked, "Where is the eldest boy, the one you _attacked_?"

Zaeed led them to the office and showed them the teen who was still lying unconscious on the fire escape.

"Would you like to press charges, sir?"

Zaeed scoffed. "Are you bloody joking? Getting this lot locked up will only lead to more trouble for me."

"How so?"

He hesitated. He knew the kids were part of the 10th Street Reds and had targeted him specifically, though he didn't really know why. But he'd seen the little girl hanging around his building the last few days, and even caught a glimpse of her following him once or twice.

"Sir?"

"Never bloody mind," Zaeed said gruffly. "You think it'll stop the little shits or their friends, then take this one in."

The officers nodded and went to the balcony to drag in the punk, who was just coming around.

"Wha– oh I'm gonna kill that little bitch," he muttered to himself before he looked up and saw the three men looking at him. He turned and glared at Zaeed. "You fucking attacked me, jackass!"

"And you broke into my apartment," Zaeed retorted. "I warned you to get the hell out."

The officers thankfully chose that moment to drag their _prisoner_ away, leaving Zaeed alone. He glanced at the clock. 04:30. Too late to go back to bed but too bloody early to do much of anything else.

He glance curiously at his omni-tool when it beeped with an incoming message.

_Saw your lights on and the police leaving just now. Not another break-in I hope. Come over and have a cup of tea before I open the bakery. – Helen_

Zaeed smiled. Helen, Mrs. Chapman to everyone but a select few, was his elderly next-door neighbor and owner of the bakery across the street. He'd moved into the building just after the war, when he'd been discharged from the Alliance military without so much as a _thank you for your service_. Not long after, Helen's husband Rupert had died. When she'd returned from the funeral, she'd found Zaeed wrestling with a would-be thief who'd meant to break in to the Chapman's flat and mistakenly tried his. A week later, another thief had succeeded where the first had failed, though Helen had thankfully still been at her bakery at the time. After that, Zaeed had taken it upon himself to look in on her every day.

"Children?" she asked incredulously when he told her what had happened. "Why... who on Earth would use _children_ to break in to someone's home?"

"They're street urchins, Helen," Zaeed said, taking a scone from the plate she offered. "They do whatever they have to in order to live."

"Poor dears. I've seen some who hang around the bakery, and I've tried to offer them bread, but they shy away."

"Trust is hard to come by on the streets," Zaeed said. "You trust the wrong person and you end up dead."

Helen frowned. "You sound as if you're speaking from experience."

He nodded slowly. "I never knew my parents, grew up here, on the streets of London."

"Poor dear," she said, patting his hand. "You seem to have done well for yourself since."

"Suppose I have." He glanced at the time. "Shi– damn. Thank you for breakfast, Helen, but I'll be late if I stay any longer."

He walked into his own flat again and found someone sitting in his living room.

"How the bloody hell do you keep getting into my flat, Vido?" he asked the man reclining on the couch as if he owned the damn place.

"You make it _so_ easy, Zaeed," Vido Santiago said with a smirk. "You continuously change your code to variations on the day the Alliance chucked you out. Someone's bound to notice the pattern."

Zaeed rolled his eyes. "All right, different bloody question. Why are you here?"

"Business proposition for you. Equal partners leading a company of mercenaries."

"Are you honestly trying to _class up_ the definition of a goddamn _gang_?"

Vido smirked. "Gang sounds so... _childish_."

Zaeed groaned. "You heard about the break-in. How?"

"Drunk tank." Vido shrugged. "Heard the whole fake story those two punks cooked up. Guess that backfired on them?"

"Aye."

"Well?"

Zaeed frowned. "Well what?"

"What d'you think of my idea?"

"Give me the day to think about it."

"Fair enough. Should I come by tonight?"

Zaeed rolled his eyes. "Fine. Now, get out. I've got a moron to stalk and capture."

"Oh? New contract?"

"No, just thought I'd go out and randomly cuff a guy, just for the hell of it." Zaeed rolled his eyes. "Idiot."

"Christ. Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed."

Zaeed glared at Vido and shoved him toward the front door. "Get. Out."

"Just think about it, okay?"

For the moment, Zaeed had no room to think about anything but the habitual bail-jumper he'd been contracted to bring in, for the fourth time in as many months. The man had gotten crafty with avoidance tactics and Zaeed found he was having to work harder to capture him each time.

Finally, late that night, the bail-jumper was back in custody, for the time being, and Zaeed started seriously considering Vido's offer. As he walked toward his building, however, two things drove every other thought from his mind.

The first was an anonymous message on his omni-tool:

_left you a gift. hope you like it._

The second was the sight of the little biotic girl from the break-in, beaten and unconscious, chained upside down to the busted light post across from his building.


	2. Chapter 2

Zaeed sighed. Whoever had trussed up the girl definitely knew what the hell they were doing. It took him nearly fifteen minutes to free her. After checking to see that she was in fact only unconscious and not _dead_, he took her to a friend who ran a small private clinic on the other side of the city. He had a long-standing mistrust of larger hospitals, and Noah Payne's clinic was well outside the Reds' territory.

"What is it with you and damsels in distress?" Noah said with a smirk while he checked the girl over.

"Shut it," Zaeed growled. "So, is she gonna be all right?"

Noah shrugged. "She'll likely be extremely sore for awhile, probably have a few scars, but she should be fine. I don't see anything life-threatening. Where'd you find her?"

"She was left outside my building, a _gift_ from the Reds for getting one 'em locked up." Zaeed shook his head sadly. "I told those damn cops no good would come from taking that bastard."

"They beat up a little kid because of you?" Noah asked incredulously.

"Pretty much. Guess a bit had to do with her running off in the middle of the job."

"What job?"

Zaeed told him about the break-in and her role in it. "It was pretty goddamn obvious she wasn't there by choice. Probably the only biotic the Reds had. Functioning biotics are pretty rare."

Noah raised an eyebrow. "Had?"

Zaeed shook his head. "Don't be thick, Noah. This wasn't just a goddamn punishment. This was her being jumped out." He gently picked up the girl's left arm and turned it over so her wrist was facing up. "See this burn? Up until a few hours ago, that was a gang tattoo."

"How d'you know all this? You weren't _there_ were you?"

"No, I..." Zaeed sighed rolled up his left sleeve, revealing a similar, albeit faded burn on his own arm.

"The Reds?"

"No, a gang Vido and I ran with when we were kids. Doesn't exist now, far as I know."

"What'd you do to get... what'd you call it, _jumped out_?"

Zaeed shrugged. "They found out I was _thinking about_ joining the Alliance when I came of age. Vido too."

"Shit. Whatever happened to Vido, anyway? I haven't seen him since the end of the war."

"He's still around, doing odd jobs. Working as a bouncer now I think. Never took to bounty hunting, said it was too much work." Zaeed looked at the clock on the wall. "Damn. I was supposed to meet him at my place hours ago. He wanted to talk about starting up what he described as a _company of mercenaries_."

"What, and he thinks _that_ won't be a ton of work?" Noah shook his head. "Look, if you want to go, the girl will be fine to stay here."

"Nah, I'll catch him later. I don't want to leave her alone."

Noah shrugged. "Suit yourself. Take the couch in my office if you like. I'll check on her in a few hours."

Zaeed nodded and settled in for a few hours' sleep. It felt like he'd only just closed his eyes when he was being shaken awake again.

"The kid's gone," Noah said. "I came down to check on her and she was just... gone."

Zaeed was on his feet in an instant and running for the door. "I've gotta find her."

It wasn't until he stepped out into the freezing temperatures that he realized he'd left without his leather jacket. He went back and searched, only to realize the girl had taken it.

_Smart kid. At least she'll be warm._

He knew that, as badly beaten as she'd been, it wasn't likely she could have gotten very far even with a few hours' head start. But there was no sign of her in any of the alleys within a mile's radius of the clinic.

Zaeed was just starting to question why he even _cared_, when he heard the sounds of someone yelling nearby. He ran up the street to the nearby playground and stopped. The ringleader from the break-in, sporting a black eye and a broken nose, was with a man about Zaeed's age. Both of them were leaning against the side of a little play castle at the back of the playground, yelling at someone inside.

The inside of the castle suddenly lit up and the boy went flying back and hit the brick wall a few feet away. He got up and ran back, but the man held out a hand to stop him.

"I'll handle this myself, Devin." The man pulled out a pistol. "You so much as think about glowing again, girlie, and you're gonna bloody regret it. Let's go."

Zaeed stepped up behind him and pressed his own pistol between the man's shoulder blades. "Walk away."

"This is none of your business, mate," the man growled. "Get lost."

"Your boy here _made_ it my business when he broke into my flat," Zaeed said, increasing the pressure of his gun on the man's back. "I won't say it again: Walk. Away."

"That's him, Pike," the boy said, coming up to stand beside the castle but as far from Zaeed as possible. "That's the one that attacked me."

Zaeed rolled his eyes. "You really are just a one-trick pony, aren't you?"

"You want to end up on the business end of a beating like Bex got, keep talking," Pike said, daring to glance back at Zaeed. "Otherwise..."

"Otherwise nothing," Zaeed retorted. "You beat up a _child_. Hell, you sent a child to do your goddamn dirty work. What the bloody hell d'you think she was gonna do?"

"Her job. This lot don't eat for free, y'know."

The inside of the castle glowed again and both Pike and Devin flew backward, with more force this time, and hit the brick wall with a sickening crunch, then slid down the wall and lay in a heap on the ground.

Zaeed holstered his pistol and crouched in the doorway of the castle, holding his hands up in surrender. "You all right, kid?" he asked, spotting the girl curled up in the corner, his jacket wrapped around her like a blanket. She shied away from him when he slowly held a hand out to her. "I'm not gonna hurt you."

"Sorry I took your jacket," she mumbled, still not daring to move.

He shrugged. "Looks like you needed it. Come on, let me take you someplace warm."

She shook her head. "'S better by myself."

"You're hurt, kid. You need food and an actual bed to sleep in, even for a few days 'til you heal up."

She shook her head again.

"Can I at least buy you breakfast? Whatever you want."

She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. "Why would you do that?"

Zaeed rolled up his sleeve again and showed her the scar on his arm. "I've been where you are, kid. I know what it's like."

She hesitated a long moment before she finally nodded. Ignoring the hand he still held out to her, she slowly crawled out of the castle and stood on wobbly legs, leaning against the wall for support.

Zaeed frowned. "How long has it been since you've eaten?"

She shrugged. "Long enough I shouldn' done that," she said, waving a hand toward Devin and Pike, who stirred slightly.

"We should get out of here before they wake up." Zaeed held a hand out to her again. "I'm Zaeed, by the way."

"I'm uh... Bex." She stared up at him blankly for a moment before she tentatively put her hand in his. "So where we goin'?"

"You like scones? My next-door neighbor owns a bakery."

"But..." She shivered and he didn't think it was from the cold. "I'll get in trouble if I go back."

"You'll be safe with me, Bex."

She stared up at him, her blue eyes opened wide. "That's what Pike said the day I met him."

"People sometimes lie," Zaeed said soberly. "But I guess you've figured that out on your own."

"Known it since I was three," she said quietly, looking down at her feet.

"What happened when you were three?"

She shook her head slightly and didn't answer. Instead, she asked, "How do I know _you're_ not lying, that you're not jus' sayin' all this to get me to go back to the Reds?"

He crouched down in front of her. "You have no reason to trust me, but have I given you a reason _not_ to?"

She shrugged. "Guess not. Yet."

"Fair enough. I'm guessing though, if you didn't trust me a little bit, I'd be over there with those two, right?"

"Yeah." She shivered again as she glanced over at Pike and Devin, then looked back up at Zaeed, a determined look on her face. "Okay. Let's go."


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: thanks for the follow :)**

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><p>While Helen Chapman fussed and worried over Bex, stuffing her full of scones and hot tea, Zaeed stepped outside to call Vido.<p>

"If you don't want to do it, you could have just said so," Vido said, sounding slightly put out.

Zaeed rolled his eyes. "Never said I didn't _want_ to, I said I'd have to think about it. It's... you don't just _start up a company_ on a goddamn whim!"

"Still could have called."

"Will you quit pouting like a damn child? Christ." Zaeed shook his head. "I'd been all set to call, but there were... complications."

"Oh?"

He told Vido everything that had happened in the last twelve hours.

"Noah's right. You _do_ have a thing for damsels in distress."

"She's not…"

"Why the hell do you even care about this kid?"

Zaeed shrugged. "She reminds me of me... us... when we were kids."

"In what way exactly? We're not tiny, female, or biotic."

"Still got goddamn bullied though."

Vido scoffed. "So? That's not new, not in gang life or otherwise." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Still, she could be _useful_ to us."

"If, and that's a big goddamn _if_, we do this merc thing, and she's still around," Zaeed growled. "You leave her out of it. She's not yours to…"

"She's not yours either, Zaeed, in case you've forgotten."

Before he could respond, Helen came running out of the bakery, carrying his leather jacket. "Your little friend is gone."

"How many times am I going to hear that today?" he muttered. "What happened, Helen?"

She looked warily at Vido's image on Zaeed's omni-tool a moment before continuing. "I turned my back for just a moment, to look for a jar of marmalade, and when I turned back, she'd disappeared."

"Problem solved, then," Vido said cheerfully.

"Not by a bloody long shot," Zaeed snapped and closed the connection. He turned back to Helen, who was pursing her lips in disapproval. She hated cursing any stronger than the occasional _hell_ or _damn_. "Sorry. I've gotta go. I have to..."

"You must find that child and bring her back," Helen said firmly. "She looked like she hadn't eaten in about a week."

"I'll try. It likely won't be easy. She's a stubborn one, even by street standards."

"She seems to trust you, Zaeed."

He shrugged. "A bit, but only enough to get her what she needed. As you said, she hadn't eaten for awhile. And she really only agreed to breakfast, didn't want anything else."

"She's so young to be all alone," Helen said, shaking her head sadly. "And those bruises!"

"I know." Even as Helen kissed him on the cheek and made him promise once more that he'd bring Bex around when he found her, Zaeed wondered yet again just why the hell he was bothering with this kid. She'd really been nothing but trouble since the moment they'd met. He should have just left her to fend for herself, but something was nagging at him, propelling him to keep searching for her, no matter how many times she ran from him.

He stopped walking after awhile and leaned against the side of a building to light a cigarette and think. It wasn't exactly like he'd told Bex, about him knowing what it was like, though he absolutely did. But there were tons of kids out there who were all on their own and did just fucking fine. So why did he give a shit about this one?

He _knew_ bloody well why he cared. It was because she reminded him of his own little Olivia. She would have been about Bex's age now.

_Would have been._

He dropped the cigarette and ground it out with the heel of his boot. It had been awhile since he'd thought about his daughter's death. She'd only been three years old when her mother's junkie neighbor had thrown her down two flights of stairs, claiming he'd been so high he'd thought she was a cat.

The bastard had been killed not a week after he was sent to prison.

Zaeed had been fighting in the war when Olivia had died. He hadn't been able to do a bloody thing to save her, hadn't _known_ what kind of place her mother had had her living in. But he _could_ do something for Bex and he'd be damned if he was going to let anything happen to her.

He was brought out of his thoughts instantly as he heard a gunshot nearby. A moment later, he heard another just as a bullet pierced the brick beside his left ear. He quickly ducked into the closest alley and crouched down against the wall.

"It's the Reds."

He nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of Bex's voice close by. He looked around and spotted her sitting with her back up against a nearby dumpster.

"How d'you know it's the Reds?" he asked, coming over to sit beside her while keeping a wary eye on the mouth of the alley.

"Who else would be shooting at either of us?"

Zaeed stifled a laugh. "Dunno about you, half-pint, but I've got a list a mile long of guys who want me dead."

"It's the Reds," Bex repeated firmly. "Pike don't like you _interferrin'_ and I'm just... too much trouble."

He knew she was probably right. He doubted she could have acquired _that_ many enemies in her young life, and most of his were, hopefully, in prison.

"So what happens now?" she asked, the slightest flicker of fear in her voice.

"First of all, you're coming with me."

He expected her to fight against it, like she'd done before at the playground, but she simply nodded once and said, "Okay."

"Can't stay here, that's for goddamn sure. I think we can hide out at Noah's place for a couple of days." He looked down at her. "You have any... anything you want to take with you?"

"Ev'rythin' I have is here," she said quietly, putting a hand on a blue flowered backpack beside her. "'S where I went, why I left the bakery. I was gonna... run."

Zaeed raised an eyebrow. "On your own?"

"Seemed... safer that way."

"Safer for who?"

"You."


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: thanks for the author & story favs and the lovely review :)**

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><p>"Have you thought this through?" Noah asked, pouring drinks for himself and Zaeed. The two men sat at the small kitchen table in Noah's flat, waiting for Vido to show up. He glanced out to the living room where Bex slept curled up in a chair. "Are you really ready to take on the responsibilities of essentially being a parent?"<p>

"I've done it before, Noah."

The doctor sighed. "Yes, but..."

"But nothing," Zaeed growled. "Just because I never actually got to _be_ a parent to Olivia doesn't mean I wasn't prepared for it."

The buzzer sounding at the front door prevented Noah from responding. He got up to let Vido in and the two men returned a moment later, speaking in hushed tones.

Zaeed rolled his eyes. "If you've got something to say, just come out and bloody say it!"

"Fine." Vido sat across from him. "You're a fucking idiot."

"No one said you had to come along for the ride," Zaeed retorted.

"Actually, we're _both_ going with you," Noah said, leaning up against the counter with his arms crossed.

Vido and Zaeed looked at each other and then up at him.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Zaeed asked.

"If you two intend to do this whole mercenary thing, you're going to need a doctor, if for nothing else than patching up you two clowns when you decide to fight _each other_."

Vido shrugged. "Seems reasonable to me. Zaeed?"

"I've got no problem with him," Zaeed said, nodding toward their host before turning serious eyes on Vido. "You on the other hand..."

"What the hell did I do?"

"Nothing, yet. Just worried about you taking advantage of Bex."

Vido narrowed his eyes. "Excuse me?"

"Not like _that_," Zaeed snapped, barely resisting the urge to reach across the table and slap him. "But I see your eyes light up every time she's mentioned, thinking about the possibility of having a biotic around."

"I'll say it again, Zaeed: she's not your kid. If she wants to do something, you can't stop her."

"And if she _doesn't_, you can't make her."

Noah rolled his eyes. "Can I ask how the hell you two are supposed to work as partners in this thing? You're damn close to killing each other right now and it's still in the _talking_ phase. What the hell are you going to do when there's an actual conflict somewhere down the road?"

Zaeed gestured to him. "The man has a point. Vido?"

Vido shrugged. "We'll work it out, same as we've always done."

"Same as we've always done?" Zaeed shook his head. "Working out when to move on to a different city when we were kids is not the same as a disagreement within a goddamn company!"

"We'll be fine," Vido said, waving his hand dismissively.

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><p><em>From: Zaeed Massani<em>

_To: Helen Chapman_

_Subj: re: Are You Alright?_

_I ran into a complication of the bullet variety while I was out looking for Bex. We're both safe. We stopped by for two seconds earlier so I could pack. We're not going to be coming back. I won't tell you where we're going, just in case, but we're leaving London. No way to avoid it._

_Thanks for all you've done, Helen. Stay safe._

_-Zaeed _

_PS: Bex says thanks for the scones._

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><p>It took very little to convince Bex that leaving London was for the best; she was eager to get as far away from the Reds as soon as possible. Convincing Vido and Noah was a different matter entirely.<p>

"Why the hell would we want to leave?" Vido asked. "There's plenty of work here."

"There's not, actually," Zaeed said. "We'd be a lot better off away from Earth, even outside of the system."

"You're a bloody lunatic," Noah said. "I get wanting to leave London. But why not just try someplace on the continent first, before you decide to leave the damn planet!"

"Pike and his boys aren't going to stop until they know both of us are dead."

"So? They're a local gang. They're not gonna stray all that far outside of London."

"Pike will," a quiet voice from the doorway.

The three men looked around to see a bleary-eyed Bex leaning against the door frame. With Zaeed's jacket around her shoulders, she looked even smaller than she already was.

"Who the hell is Pike?" Vido asked.

"He's a bloody jackass who doesn't take no for an answer," Zaeed growled.

Bex nodded. "Yeah."

Noah frowned. "What makes you think he won't stay in London?"

"I... I'm not from here," she said after several minutes of intently studying a cracked tile on the floor. "I used to live in Vancouver. Pike found me on the street when he was there lookin' for one of the kids who'd run off... I dunno what he did, but Pike killed him for it."

"He killed a kid? How old?"

"Dunno. Older than me 's all I know, but not much."

"And you were there?" Vido asked. "You saw it happen?"

She nodded again. Zaeed saw a haunted look briefly pass over her face as she glanced in his direction.

He crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow at the others. "Well?"

Noah conceded with a shrug and said nothing.

Vido wasn't so easily convinced. "So, you want to let a kid we don't even know decide where we set up?"

"Do you trust me?" Zaeed asked.

"About most things, sure. But it's so obvious you're just using this kid as a replacement for Olivia."

This time Zaeed didn't hold back, reached across the table and punched Vido square in the jaw. He braced for a return hit, but it never came. Instead, he held back a laugh at the looks of surprise on Vido and Noah's faces as Bex held Vido in stasis, his arm raised and fist clenched.

"Stop fighting," she said, looking each of them in the eye in turn. She released Vido and sagged back against the wall a moment before she stalked back into the living room and curled up in the chair again.

"Let's get one thing goddamn straight," Zaeed growled, glaring at Vido. "No one will _ever_ replace Olivia."

Vido shrugged. "So you say. Still looks that way."

Zaeed clenched and unclenched his fists a few times, itching to punch the bastard again. Instead, he got up from the table. "We're leaving," he said as he stood in the doorway. He glanced at Vido again. "Call me when you're ready to talk without bringing up the goddamn past."

Vido grunted in response.

"Where are you going?" Noah asked.

Zaeed shook his head. "Dunno yet. But I'll keep an eye out for good locations for a base of operations, wherever we end up."

"Good luck."

He walked into the living room and found Bex already waiting by the front door, backpack in hand, his duffel at her feet. Neither of them spoke until they were in a shuttle bound for the spaceport.

"I don' like him, don' trust him," she said quietly. "The big mean one."

"Smart girl."

"Why d'you want to do anything with him? All you do is fight."

Zaeed sighed. "At this point, I'm not sure of that myself."

"Why's he think I'm gonna replace –" She frowned. "Who's Olivia?"


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: thanks for the follows :)**

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><p><em>From: Noah Payne<em>

_To: Zaeed Massani_

_Subj: re: Found a Place_

_Omega sounds perfect. We'll be there in a couple of days then._

_How's the kid doing? Haven't seen any of the Reds near the clinic, not surprising since this isn't their turf. But Vido said he thought he saw a couple of 'em hanging around your apartment._

_He also got smacked by your neighbor. She didn't believe him when he said he wasn't there to cause trouble, just to pick up the rest of your stuff. Apparently, she didn't like the look of him the day she saw him on your vid-chat._

_Anyway, like I said, we'll be out in a couple of days. I still think it's a mistake, you two going into business together, but you're both so damn stubborn, I know there's no talking you out of it._

_-Noah_

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><p>It had been years since Zaeed had slept soundly, and recent events had put him more on edge than ever. So when his door suddenly slid open at 01:00 the first night after Noah and Vido arrived on Omega, he was instantly awake. He silently retrieved the pistol he kept under his pillow and waited for the intruder to make his appearance.<p>

He was startled when, instead of the assassin he'd been expecting, Bex softly padded into the room, dragging a blanket behind her. He quickly put the gun back under his pillow, though she wasn't looking in his direction, instead staring at a point in the corner of the room.

After a couple of minutes of standing stock still in the middle of the room, she walked over to the chair in the corner and curled up in it, pulling the blanket around her so only a small pouf of blond hair was visible over the top. Moments later, he heard her snoring softly.

She was still curled up in the chair, in exactly the same position, when Zaeed woke a few hours later. He carefully scooped her up in his arms and walked back to her room. He was surprised to see that, aside from the blanket she was wrapped in, her bed hadn't been disturbed at all. So where the hell had she been before she'd come into his room?

He didn't say anything about her nighttime wandering until it happened four nights in a row and curiosity got the better of him.

"Are you sleeping all right?" he asked casually one morning over breakfast.

She nodded and gave him a small smile, though he noticed she wasn't eating, only pushing her food around her plate.

He wondered if she'd even tell him if something was wrong. She never revealed more of herself than she thought she needed to in any given situation. And the longest conversation they'd had thus far had been when they'd talked about Vido, and eventually Olivia, the day they'd left London. All he really knew about her was that she really was six ("six and a half" she'd insisted). He didn't even know her real name.

"You know you can talk to me, if anything's bothering you."

She nodded again and opened her mouth to say something but quickly clamped it shut again as Vido walked into the kitchen. As he sat down with a cup of coffee, she got up and ran from the room.

He raised an eyebrow. "Did I do something to antagonize her?"

Zaeed shook his head. "Lately? No bloody clue. I know she doesn't like you, but I feel the same way most days myself, so I'm not gonna fault her for that."

"Thanks, just what I wanted to hear first thing in the morning."

Zaeed ignored him and got up to grab an energy bar from the cabinet before he went to Bex's room. He found her sitting in the far corner, wrapped in her blanket and flipping through channels on her small TV.

He sat beside her and handed her the energy bar. "Eat. You'll crash if you don't."

She nodded absentmindedly and put the bar on the floor between them without looking away from the TV.

"Was there something you wanted to ask me before Vido came in?"

She stopped suddenly, her thumb poised above the button on the remote. After a moment, she turned the TV off. "I... wanna go to school. I've never been."

"Really?" Zaeed wasn't surprised she hadn't been to school; he and Vido hadn't gone until they were 10. He _was_ surprised that she'd decided on her own that she wanted to go.

She shrugged. "Ran away when I was four, been with the Reds since then. Pike didn't exactly encourage us to get smarter, didn't want us getting smarter than him I guess."

"You ran away from home when you were four?"

"No, from the orphanage. I wasn' there all that long." She started playing with a loose thread on her blanket as she continued. "My parents were both with the Alliance. Momma died in the war and Daddy went missing during a mission a couple of months after that. When he hadn't shown up after a month, my grandpa told me he was dead. Six weeks after, there was a fire at my grandpa's house. He died and I spent two weeks in a burn ward before I got shipped off to the orphanage."

Zaeed wanted to ask _why_ she'd run away from the orphanage, but knew it was a bloody miracle she'd revealed this much of her past. If she wanted to tell him more, she'd do it in her own time.

After they'd sat in silence for awhile, he pulled up a search on his omni-tool and they looked for a school with an extranet-based program.

He hesitated as he brought up the forms that needed to be filled out. "You all right with me knowing your real name and all?"

She nodded but frowned. "I don't know how to spell it. I think Grandpa tried to teach me, but I don't remember."

"It's okay. I know a way to find out." Zaeed did a quick search and found a report listing two girls who had gone missing two years ago from Maple Ridge Orphanage in Vancouver. Six-year-old Ainsley Stark had come back to the orphanage on her own a week later; four-year-old Rebekah Shepard was still missing.

Bex wrinkled her nose as she leaned on his arm and looked at the aged-up picture beside her name. The artist's rendering made her look like she was on her way to have tea with Alice and the Mad Hatter. "I don't look like that, do I?" she asked, sounding scandalized.

Zaeed chuckled as he glanced down at her freckles, overalls and ratty old Chucks. "Not by a long shot. Your dad happen to be John Shepard?"

She nodded. "You knew him?"

"I did. We served in the same unit with him during the war. Might've been a different John Shepard, of course. Still..."

She looked up at Zaeed, a pleading look in her blue eyes. "Don' tell Vido, 'k?"

"Wouldn't dream of it, half-pint."

While Zaeed filled out the forms for school, Bex went back to flipping channels, still looking for cartoons. After awhile, she sighed and turned the TV off again.

He glanced over at her. "Something wrong?"

"I can't... um... I can't sleep, in my bed."

He smiled. "I'd wondered why I kept finding you asleep in my chair the last few nights."

"Oh yeah."

"Where were you sleeping _before_ you came into my room?"

"First couple of nights, I slept all night in the big chair in the living room," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "After the others got here, I slept in the corner in my room."

Though he knew he likely didn't want to know the answer, Zaeed asked, "Why?"

"'S the only way I feel safe to sleep." Her biotics flared brightly for a brief moment. "If I sleep in a corner, nobody can sneak up behind me."

He had a feeling there was a lot she wasn't saying, but didn't ask for details. "How about we get you a chair, we can put it here in the corner. It'd be more comfortable than sleeping on the floor."

"Really?" Her eyes lit up and she smiled then, the first real smile he'd seen from her.

An hour later, they'd found a chair she liked, cream with flowers.

"Until it gets here, you can sleep in my chair," he said when the order had been placed, to be delivered in 48 hours.

She smiled again. "Thanks."


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: thanks for the author fav :)**

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><p>Returning from a week-long job, Zaeed could hear the sounds of a heated argument before the elevator had made it even halfway between the base's docking bay and the apartment he and Bex shared with Vido and Noah. Normally, he wouldn't have given the argument a second thought, given that Vido picked fights with damn near the entire company on a daily basis, just to hear himself talk.<p>

_Pompous git._

But this fight seemed to be between Vido and Bex. She had come out of her shell a bit in the two and a half years they'd been on Omega, but she still avoided him whenever possible. Any argument between them wasn't going to end well.

Zaeed willed the elevator to go faster.

"Oh good... you're back," Noah said, meeting him at the front door. "They've been yelling at each other for close to twenty minutes now."

"And you didn't do anything to stop it?"

"Hell no. This is a justified argument, on her part."

Zaeed didn't ask what Noah meant; he didn't need to. As they stood outside the office, he could finally hear what was actually being said.

"I _can't_ go back." From the exasperation in her voice, it wasn't the first time Bex had said this.

"It's been two and a half years, Rebekah," Vido snapped.

Zaeed and Noah gave each other cringing looks. They knew what Bex's next words would be.

"Don't. Call. Me. Rebekah." It was really the only rule she had, and Vido insisted on breaking it any chance he got, just to antagonize her. She'd yelled at Zaeed after the first time it had happened and it had taken him ages to convince her that he wasn't the reason Vido knew her real name. In truth, Vido had answered a vid-comm call from one of the teachers who ran her school program; they flat-out refused to use her preferred name.

As usual, Vido continued as if Bex hadn't spoken. "What the hell makes you think Pike is even still looking for you?"

"He probably _isn't_, but that doesn't mean he's forgotten about me. If I go back, I'd just be making myself a target again."

"Well that's just too damn bad, girlie. We've got a contract in London and you're going."

"No, I'm not." Before Vido had a chance to respond, Bex stormed out of the office, and ran straight into Zaeed. Her furious expression faded immediately and she smiled. "You're back!"

"Having fun?" he asked, eying the doorway of the office, waiting for Vido to come barging out.

Bex rolled her eyes. "Oh yeah. Loads."

"Did I hear right?" Zaeed led her away from the office toward the kitchen. "Vido's trying to get you to go back to London?"

She nodded. "'Parently, some rich big shot hired us to do security for... something. I dunno, I stopped listening after Vido said London."

"Why is he insisting you go?"

She shrugged. "Because he's a jackass and he hates me?"

"Have you been eating regularly?" Zaeed asked, abruptly changing the subject. He'd talk to Vido about the job later.

Bex seemed to be concentrating very hard on the selection of drinks in the fridge as she answered with a non-committal "uh-huh."

"Bex."

She sighed heavily as she resurfaced and handed Zaeed a beer, taking a water for herself. "Yes, I've been eating."

"But not anywhere near the amount she should be," Noah chimed in as he joined them and snagged the beer from Zaeed's hand.

"Oi, get your own." Zaeed looked at Bex with concern. "What's going on?"

"What makes you think anything's going on?" she asked while avoiding his gaze.

"She's been trying to starve the biotics away," Noah said.

_Shit._

This wasn't the first time she'd done something like this, and Zaeed knew it wouldn't be the last. But he wondered if it was more than just the biotics; she only ever seemed to do it when he was away.

Bex glared at Noah and he shrugged. "Sorry, kid. It's for your own damn good. You won't listen to me, but maybe, for once, you'll listen to Zaeed."

"Might as well get it over with." She flopped down on one of the kitchen chairs and folded her arms on the table. "Talk."

Zaeed and Noah exchanged a glance as they heard Vido yelling again from the office. Noah went to head him off and Zaeed sat next to Bex.

"You know starving yourself won't make your biotics go away, right?"

She laid her head on her arms. "I know."

"Then why do you do it?"

"If I don't eat, I can be _too sick_ to do whatever Vido wants me to do."

"What d'you mean?"

"He _plays nice_ while you're here," she said quietly. "Then when you go out on jobs, he finds jobs that specifically request a biotic."

Zaeed clenched his jaw in anger; he was going to kill the bastard. "So this fight you had about London isn't anything new?"

"'S the first time a job's been in London, far as I know. But yeah, it's pretty much every time you leave."

"Why'd you never tell me, or Noah?"

"'Cause if I told you, there'd be more yelling. I'm tired of the yelling. Reminds me of Pike."

Zaeed sighed. "I'm sorry I ever dragged you into all this, half-pint. Should have known that bastard wouldn't leave you alone."

She raised her head and looked at him, her eyes wide with panic. "You regret taking me off the street."

He shook his head, reached out and gently squeezed both of her hands in one of his. "No, never. I regret not telling that bastard to fuck off the first time he decided you were nothing more than a goddamn weapon."

"Not nice to talk about people behind their back, Zaeed," Vido said as he walked into the kitchen. Bex flinched when he put a hand on her shoulder. "Sets a bad example for young, impressionable Rebekah."

She opened her mouth to say something but quickly closed it when Zaeed squeezed her hands again.

"What sets a bad example is you forcing her to do jobs she doesn't want to do," he retorted.

"A client requests a biotic, I'm going to give them a biotic," Vido said. "She's been mysteriously _ill_ the last several jobs, but not this time. She's going, ill or not."

"No, I'm not!" Bex growled, her biotics flaring erratically. They died down suddenly and she winced as Vido tightened his grip on her shoulder.

"This client in London, he's very rich, Rebekah," he said through gritted teeth. "And if all goes well, it could be an on-going contract."

"You're just going to have to figure a way to do it without her," Zaeed said, standing up and forcefully removing Vido's hand from Bex's shoulder.

He waited until she'd run off to her room before he took Vido by the collar and slammed him up against the nearby wall. "Leave her alone. I won't tell you again."

"You don't want to cross me, Zaeed," Vido said, his threatening tone diminished by a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. "It won't end well for you, or Rebekah."


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: thanks for the story favs :)**

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><p>Bex knew something was wrong before she'd even opened her eyes. She had a bad headache, which meant she hadn't eaten in longer than usual. Even when she was being fake sick to avoid Vido, she still ate a bit, just to keep Noah off her back.<p>

She also noticed immediately that she wasn't in her chair, or even Zaeed's or the one in the living room. It felt like she was lying on a hard bench. When she heard the low hum of an engine, she realized she was in the back of a shuttle. She couldn't hear anyone talking, but it was obvious she wasn't alone. Every once in awhile, she heard the scrape of fiberglass on metal as someone shifted in their seat.

She kept her eyes closed and pretended to still be asleep until the shuttle landed, when someone roughly shook her.

"Wake up, Rebekah."

She was instantly fully awake and staring into Vido's cold eyes. She tried to sit up quickly, but lack of food made her dizzy.

"What, no comeback this time?" he sneered as he pulled her up.

"Where's Zaeed?" she asked, trying to keep fear out of her voice.

"Don't worry your little blond head about Zaeed. He'll be here."

"Where –" Her next question answered itself when the door of the shuttle opened. She immediately recognized the warehouse they were parked in front of as one of the ones the Reds had used in the past.

Vido chuckled darkly at the look of terror that passed over Bex's face. "Welcome home, Rebekah."

"Why are you doing this?" She was stalling for time, though she had no idea how that was going to help her.

He said nothing as he yanked her up by her arm and dragged her from the shuttle and into the warehouse. Most of the company was waiting inside.

He shoved her at Noah, who was standing near the door, looking like he was questioning every decision he'd ever made in life.

"I need her ready as soon as possible," Vido said. "I don't care what you have to do, but get her strength back. Go!"

Noah took Bex by the arm and made a show of dragging her from the room, though he was much more gentle than Vido had been. He led her down a short hallway to a large kitchen and set her on one of the bar stools by the island in the center.

"Where is Zaeed?" she asked again as she watched Noah mixing the ingredients for what looked and smelled like a protein shake.

He shook his head. "I don't know. I haven't seen him since last night after you went to bed. He and Vido were arguing, louder than usual, and I stepped in before they started punching each other, or worse."

Bex frowned. "Worse? Oh. You mean they might have decided to shoot each other?"

"Exactly." He poured the protein shake into a glass and handed it to her. "Drink."

"But –"

"I'm trying to help you, kid. Whatever Vido told you about the job here was a lie."

"He said it was a security detail that had requested a biotic," she said, taking a tentative sip of the shake.

"That's not even close to what he's planning." Noah sighed heavily. "He made a deal with Pike; he sold you back to the Reds in exchange for this place. He's setting up a base here."

Bex inhaled sharply and choked on the shake. "He _sold_ me?" she croaked when she finally stopped coughing.

"Yes."

"Does Zaeed know?"

"Yes. That's what the fight was about last night."

"Then how did I get here?" Bex tightly gripped the glass. "He wouldn't –"

Noah plucked the glass from her hand, though she was still so weak, there wasn't even a small chance she'd shatter it. "No, he wouldn't. After I separated them, Vido went down to his office in the base and Zaeed went to bed. As far as I know, he was still in his room when Vido took you from yours."

Bex shuddered. The thought of Vido being in her room, the only place she truly felt safe, made her sick. Suddenly, she was angry. She glared across the island at Noah. "You could have stopped him. You knew all this was gonna happen and you just... let it."

He shook his head. "There wasn't anything I could have done. I was down in the med-bay, taking care of a bunch of idiots who got drunk and then decided to pick a fight with the batarians Vido just hired. Besides, even if I'd been there in the apartment, there wasn't a damn thing I could have done on my own. If I'd tried to stop Vido, I'd likely be dead right now and _you'd_ be in the hands of one of those batarian bastards. Believe me when I tell you, you do not want to mess with one of them, especially if you've got no way to defend yourself."

Bex scoffed but said nothing as she tried to drink the rest of the protein shake. She'd never liked them, but at the moment, she needed her strength back up. There was no way she was letting herself get taken in by the Reds again; she wouldn't last the night.

Finally, she choked down the last of the shake and stood up. She knew she likely wouldn't make it far, but she had to at least _try_ to escape.

"What are you doing?" Noah asked, walking around the island to stand in front of her. "You can't –"

She shook her head as her hands lit up. "I'm sorry, Noah, but I can't just sit around and do nothing. I'm not going back to the Reds."

"Bex, please." He took another step toward her and she threw him back against the wall beside the door.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered as she ran past him and out into the hallway.

"Do you _ever_ stop trying to run away?" a cold voice said from somewhere behind her. She spun around and saw Vido standing a few feet away, holding a pistol. She automatically took a step back, her hands glowing again, but he quickly closed the distance between them and took her by the throat. "You're not getting away this time, Rebekah."

She struggled to loosen his grip as he swiftly carried her upstairs to his new office where Pike and Devin were waiting.

"Still a pain in the ass, I see," Pike said as Vido threw Bex to the floor.

"Exceptionally, yes," Vido said. "Endlessly coddled by my ex-business partner."

_Ex? That meant –_

A door on the other side of the room opened and Zaeed, badly beaten and barely standing on his own, was pushed into the room by two batarians.

"I believe you gentlemen know Zaeed Massani?" Vido said with a look of contempt as he glared at Zaeed.

Bex scrambled to her feet and tried to run to Zaeed, but Pike reached over and pulled her back by her hair so she was standing between himself and Devin.

"You're not going anywhere 'cept with us," he snapped. He glanced at Vido. "We done here?"

Vido nodded, not to Pike, but to the batarians. A moment later, they opened fire. Bex ducked just in time and scrambled back across the room. As the bodies fell, she felt a strong hand push hard on her back, causing her to stumble and fall down the stairs. Her head hit the railing on the landing and she struggled to stay awake.

As she lost consciousness, she heard Vido's voice, sounding very far away. "Now, _partner_, what to do with you."


	8. Chapter 8

When she came to, still lying at the bottom of the stairs, Bex felt like someone was trying to crack her head open. It took her a moment to remember what had happened. Then she remembered Vido's words to Zaeed.

_Now, partner, what to do with you._

_Shit._

The warehouse was oddly quiet and she quickly realized there were few people left inside, and those that were all seemed to be heading toward the back of the building. She quietly followed them out into a chilly downpour to the alley behind the warehouse and hid behind a crate.

At the end of the alley, Zaeed was being held by six men. Six men, Bex realized, that had made up the squad he took on every job. It wouldn't have surprised her in the least if Vido had paid them off. She knew every last member of the company, save Zaeed and probably Noah, would kill their own mothers if the price was right.

Vido was standing in front of Zaeed and Bex could see his mouth moving but couldn't hear what he was saying. She bit her lip hard to suppress a scream as one of the batarians who'd been in the office handed Vido a gun – Zaeed's gun – and he pressed it to Zaeed's face and fired.

The six men immediately dropped their hold on Zaeed and he slumped to the ground. Bex shrank into the shadows as Vido and the rest filed back into the warehouse. The moment the door closed on the last one, she ran across the alley and skidded to a stop beside Zaeed.

He was still alive.

"Just hold on, just hold on, hold on, hold on," Bex murmured over and over again as she quickly formulated a plan in her mind.

She had to get away from the warehouse, that much she knew for certain. It wouldn't be long before Vido discovered she wasn't still lying at the bottom of the steps below his office.

But she couldn't just leave Zaeed. He'd never abandoned her and she'd be damned if she was going to abandon him now.

"Don't die. You can't die. You hear me? You can't die. I won't let you!" she muttered as she finally got to her feet and tried to drag him out of the alley. There wasn't a chance in hell she was going to get far at all. Zaeed had always said she was _goddamn fierce_, but she was still small for nine years old.

Still, she'd do anything to get him someplace safe.

It took what felt like hours, slowly and carefully dragging Zaeed's unconscious form through the maze of alleys. Finally, Bex came across a tiny clinic that backed up to the alley, she thought it might have been a vet instead of a human clinic, and cried with relief when she saw a light on in the back window.

She stumbled up the steps and pounded on the door, yelling for all she was worth for somebody to come out and help. After a minute or so, the light on the porch came on and the door slid open.

"Can I help you, miss?" The man standing in the doorway looked about nine feet tall and Bex backed up instinctively. His eyes fell on Zaeed lying at the bottom of the steps and he looked startled as he seemed to jump into action immediately. "What the hell happened to him?" he asked as he carefully picked up Zaeed and slung him over his shoulder.

"Shot," Bex said. "Held down by six men... shot by..." She trailed off as she followed the stranger into the clinic and watched as he laid Zaeed on the table in the middle of an exam room and got out a bunch of metal instruments.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw her standing awkwardly by the door. "Sit."

She gratefully sank down onto the nearest stool.

"So, what happened?" he asked as he turned back to the table. "Aside from your friend here being shot, I mean. You don't look so great yourself."

"I, um, tripped." She knew she didn't sound at all convincing.

"Mhm. Tripped, or were pushed?"

She swallowed hard, refusing to think about what had happened in Vido's office. "T-tripped," she stuttered.

He turned from the table and came over to crouch in front of her. She flinched when he reached up to touch the cut on her head.

"Nasty cut for tripping," he muttered, more to himself than to her, as he gently applied medi-gel.

She pushed his hand away impatiently. "Forget about me. Help him," she pleaded, glancing over at Zaeed lying the table.

The doctor shook his head as he stood up again and walked back across the room. "I don't know there's much I _can_ do for him. I've never dealt with anything this severe before."

"Please."

"I'll try, but I make no promises."

"Thank you." She rolled her stool across the floor to the other side of the exam table. "Anything I can do to help?"

The man blinked. "You want to help?" He made it sound as if it was the most surprising thing he'd ever heard.

She nodded. "Wouldn't be the first time."

It wasn't a lie; in the last year, she'd spent a lot of time with Noah in the med-bay whenever Zaeed was on a job.

"If you like." They worked in silence for awhile before he laid down his instruments with a heavy sigh. "I... just don't know. There's nothing else I can do to help him. I've got a friend who was a medic during the war. Still lives in London, I think. He should be able to help."

"'K."

She waited while the doctor went into his office to make the call, until she heard him talking to a very familiar voice. She ran into the office and stopped dead when she saw the face on the vid-comm.

"Noah?"

He looked equally surprised to see her. "Hey kid. How the hell did you get all the way to John's office? Actually, no, how'd you get _Zaeed_ all the way to John's office?"

She shrugged. "I'm stronger than I look?"

"Obviously."

"Wait. That's Zaeed?" John asked.

Noah raised an eyebrow. "You didn't recognize him?

"It's been six years, and..." John gave a sidelong glance to Bex before he lowered his voice. "And he's got half his face blown off."

"Right. I'll be there as soon as I can. I've got to dodge Vido; he seems to think I'd definitely know where you ran off to, Bex. See you in a bit."

The screen went dark and John turned to Bex, a stunned look on his face.

She frowned. "What?"

"Did Noah just call you Bex?"

"Yeah. What about it?"

"It's what I... used to call my daughter."

"And?" She suddenly realized what he was trying to say and backed away from him until she hit the wall by the door. "That's insane. My parents... my mom died in the war, my dad went missing not long after. My grandpa said..." She slowly slid to the floor, suddenly numb. "My grandpa said he was dead. And then _he_ died not long after."

John crouched down in front of her. "Would that grandpa happened to have been named Caleb?"

She swallowed hard and nodded.

"Died in a house fire in Vancouver?"

She nodded again. "Oh gods." She scrambled to her feet and ran for the front door.

"Bex, _wait_!" A heavy hand came down on her shoulder and quickly spun her around so she ended up looking into John's eyes. Eyes that were the same pale blue as her own. As she took a closer look at his general appearance, she realized he looked extraordinarily like a younger version of what little she remembered of her grandfather. Same dark brown hair that curled just slightly, same nose, same height. His beard even grew in the same way.

_Oh. Damn._

She opened her mouth to say something and quickly snapped it shut again. They stared at each other a long minute before she finally said, "Take care of Zaeed. Please. And tell Noah I'm sorry... I gotta... go."

The hand tightened on her shoulder as she tried to run. "My daughter or not, I can't in good conscious let you wander out there on the streets alone," John said. "It's cold and raining, and I'm not yet convinced you don't have concussion."

"I –"

"You'll be safer here than you will on the streets. Whoever shot Zaeed is likely out there looking for you, if they know you witnessed it. Please, just stay one night."

She hesitated. She didn't really _want_ to stay, but he was right. She didn't think Vido, or anyone else, had seen her in the alley, but he'd likely have realized what had happened the moment he saw she was gone.

Plus, it was raining; she hated the rain.

She sighed. "Fine. One night. That's it."


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: thanks for the fav and follows :)**

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><p>John and Noah sat late into the night, drinking and talking. John was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that his little girl was <em>alive<em>, albeit a continent and an ocean away from where he'd left her. From the sounds of it, she'd had a rough time of it since he'd last seen her.

He still remembered the last words he'd said to her before he left on a shuttle bound for the spaceport.

"I'll be back before you know it."

But he hadn't come back, not for a year and a half. By then, his house had burned down, his father was dead, and Bex was _missing presumed dead_. He could only imagine that Bex and Caleb had heard those same words applied to him.

Heartbroken, he had left the military and gone back to school to finish the last few credits he needed for his degree in veterinary medicine; he'd graduated and immediately hopped on a transport leaving Vancouver. He'd ended up in London and joined a practice there. The woman who'd owned the clinic had retired a year ago, giving the reigns over to John.

Noah had explained how he'd come to know Bex and everything that had happened in the two and half years since, though he said Zaeed would be able to tell him more. Assuming the man ever woke up.

Any operation involving a gunshot was tricky business, but this was trickier than most. As John had suspected, Noah had more experience with gunshots, but even he wasn't all that confident in Zaeed's chances of recovery. But Bex kept _insisting_ he was going to be okay.

She also kept insisting she was going to kill Vido Santiago, first chance she got. John certainly shared the sentiment. From what Noah had said, the only good thing Vido had done since Bex had come into their lives was to double-cross the two bastards he'd _sold_ her to, and that had been for purely selfish reasons.

The thing John didn't quite understand, and Noah hadn't been any help, was how Bex had ended up on the streets of Vancouver in the first place. She'd apparently told Noah and Zaeed how she'd come to live in London, but never told them why she'd run away from the orphanage. Assuming she had actually run away and not been lured out and taken.

John had gone to the orphanage in Maple Ridge and talked to the matron. Mrs. Talbot had been less than forthcoming with the details of Bex's brief stay. All she said was that Bex hadn't gotten along with anyone and she'd refused to sleep in her bed; she'd slept curled up in a ball in the corner every single night she'd been there. It had seemed to John that Mrs. Talbot had been almost _relieved_ when Bex had gone missing along with her roommate. When the older girl had come back a week later, she'd apparently been scared out of her mind and half-starved, but very much alive. But she'd never spoken to anyone about what had happened in the week she'd been gone, nor where Bex might have been. In fact, it had been more than six months before she spoke _at all_.

John glanced over at Noah when someone started pounding loudly on the front door.

They walked out of John's office just in time to see Bex standing in the doorway, glowing from head to foot, yelling at the two men who stood on the step outside.

John took a step toward the door, but Noah held him back.

"She knows what she's doing, John."

"How long has she been a biotic? Moira and I always knew it was a possibility, after she was exposed to eezo a few months before Bex was born, but when I left on that last mission, she hadn't shown any tendencies."

Noah shrugged. "No idea. First time she and Zaeed met, she had him in a stasis field. And it didn't seem to be a new phenomenon. It's likely the Reds picked her up _because_ she was biotic."

They watched, amazed, as Bex threw a biotic _punch_ at the two men standing outside. A moment later, there was a dull _thud_ as they hit the wall on the other side of the alley.

She closed and locked the door and turned, a slight grimace on her face as she spotted John and Noah watching her. "Vido's men. I don't think it's safe to keep Zaeed here. They'll be back with –"

She stopped suddenly and fell to the floor in a dead faint.

"Bex!" John rushed over to pick her up and took her into his office. He turned to Noah after he'd laid her carefully on the couch. "What's wrong with her?"

Noah sighed. "Nothing, really. She just hasn't eaten in way too long. I made her a protein shake after Vido brought her to the warehouse, but that was _hours_ ago. And she hadn't been eating right for about a week before that."

"Why not?"

"She knew if she didn't eat, she'd be too weak to go on jobs for Vido. At least, that's what she told Zaeed last night. She's been doing it for over a year, whenever he went out on a job. I always thought she was trying to starve the biotics out of her system or something."

"I'm not stupid," Bex mumbled as she regained consciousness. "I know I can't actually make it go away."

John helped her sit up as Noah took an energy bar from his pocket and handed it to her. "Eat."

She rolled her eyes, though John noticed she tore into the packaging like a bear coming out of hibernation.

"She's right," Noah said as the two men walked to the exam room to check on Zaeed. "Zaeed once said Pike was a man who doesn't like to lose, but he is... was... _nothing_ compared to Vido. Pike would travel across the planet to take out revenge on someone, but Vido will absolutely hunt them, and me probably, across the whole damn galaxy."

"So where's that leave us?" John asked.

"Until we know something _definite_ about Zaeed, whether he's going to make it or –"

"He _is_," Bex snapped, following them into the room and sitting on a stool beside the exam table. "He just... he has to. 'K?"

Noah and John nodded.

"Fine," Noah said. "Until Zaeed is stable enough to travel longer distances, we don't have many options. But I think, if we're extremely careful, we can make it to a safe house I have just outside the city."

"Let's get to it, then," John said as he threw supplies into a bag. "The quicker we can get him moved and stable again, the better off he'll be."


	10. Chapter 10

"I _told_ them you were gonna wake up!"

Zaeed looked around in confusion at the sound of the familiar voice. His one good eye finally spotted Bex sitting cross-legged in a chair across the room. There was a cut going through her left eyebrow and extending up a couple of inches to her forehead, but she looked much better than he'd expected after everything that had happened at the warehouse. He was honestly surprised she was even still alive.

"Hey half-pint," he said hoarsely. "How long you been sitting there?"

She slowly counted off on her fingers, muttering to herself, before she said, "Off 'n' mostly on for about three days."

"And who's _they_?" He looked around again as he gingerly sat up and immediately recognized the room. "You're with Noah?"

She nodded. "And um... John."

"Your old man John?" She nodded again and he frowned. "I fucking knew it. I'm dead, aren't I?"

"Nope, not dead. Not yet anyway."

"So how'd I, we, get here?"

She came over to sit beside him on the bed. "Started out at a vet clinic not all that far from the warehouse –"

"Where you just happened to run into your long-lost dad?"

She shrugged. "Of all the vet clinics in all the worlds..."

Zaeed groaned. "You're cut off from watching Casablanca ever again."

Bex rolled her eyes. "_Anyway_..."

"Hey, good to see you awake," said a voice from the doorway. "How are you feeling, Zaeed?"

"A little groggy and pretty goddamn sore, but all right," he said as he slowly turned his head to see the man who was crossing the room. He was just barely starting to go gray, but John really hadn't changed much in six years. "Can't believe I got patched up by a bloody vet."

John laughed. "Don't worry; most of that's Noah's handiwork."

"So, he knows you invaded his safe house?"

"Of course. It was his idea."

"A couple of Vido's idiots came by the vet clinic, so we had to get out," Bex said.

"Anything since then?" Zaeed asked.

She shook her head. "But Noah went back to the warehouse. Figured Vido would get suspicious if he stayed away too long."

"Bex, you've been sitting in here long enough," John said. "Go down to the kitchen and get something to eat, okay? You skipped lunch."

She pouted for a moment but finally got up and left, grumbling to herself as she went.

Zaeed sighed. "Still not eating much, then?"

"No. Not sleeping much either," John said as he did a few scans. "She's spent about 95% of the last three days in that chair."

"Doesn't mean she's not sleeping though. Didn't Noah tell you? She only sleeps in chairs or in the corner on the floor."

"Matron at the orphanage told me the same thing. So that wasn't just a quirk or something? She still does that all the time?"

Zaeed nodded. "She told me, years ago, it's the only way she feels safe, that no one can sneak up on her."

"Shit." John pulled the chair across the room and sat by the bed. "I'm glad she had you looking out for her, Zaeed."

"You're bloody joking, right? You call _this_ looking out for her?"

"You seem to have gotten the worst of it."

Zaeed clenched his jaw. "Vido pushed her down the stairs, John."

"I _knew_ she was lying when she said she'd tripped. 'Course, we were still... strangers then." John frowned. "Mostly still are, really."

"It's just gonna take her awhile to trust you."

"Why wouldn't she trust me? I'm her father."

Zaeed shook his head. "Biologically, yes. But for now, at best, you're just someone who helped her when trusting the unknown was safer than trusting the known. And at worst, you're the man who, in her eyes, lied to her and then bloody abandoned her."

John looked stunned. "Abandoned... I didn't... And when the hell did I ever _lie_ to her?"

"You said you'd 'be back before I knew it.' But you didn't come back at all," Bex said quietly, standing in the doorway. "I figured you just didn't want me anymore."

"So you didn't even believe your grandfather when he said I was dead?"

She shook her head.

"Why not?"

"We didn't have a memorial like we had for Momma after the war. So I figured he was lying too."

Zaeed shifted uncomfortably on the bed as the room filled with silence. He'd give anything to have not heard that conversation.

Finally, John got up and knelt in front of Bex. "I'm not going _anywhere_," he said, brushing tears from her face. "I promise."

She didn't look like she really believed him but nodded slowly before she walked over to the bed and sat next to Zaeed again. "What about you?"

He frowned. "What _about_ me?"

"Are you gonna stay?"

"Of course I am. I'd only leave if I had a damn good reason, like to keep you safe, or to go hunt down Vido." His gaze flicked to John for a moment before he looked back at Bex. "And if I did, you'd _know_ that's why I was leaving."

John rolled his eyes. "Thanks for that."

Zaeed shrugged but said nothing. He knew it was a bit of a cheap shot, but he wasn't going to apologize for the truth.

Bex frowned as she looked back and forth between them. "I'm just gonna go," she said as she got off the bed.

John shook his head and stood up. "You stay, I'll go." When Bex started to protest, he added, "I'm just going downstairs, see if I can get hold of Noah. It's been awhile since he checked in."

"You okay, half-pint?" Zaeed asked as Bex settled back on one side of the bed again.

She shrugged. "Guess so."

"Don't be too hard on John."

"But you just – why do I have to be nice to him and you don't?"

"Who said I'm not being nice to him?" Zaeed gave her as stern a look as he was capable of at the moment. "Were you eavesdropping?"

She looked down at her hands and mumbled, "Maybe."

"So you never went to the kitchen to get food?"

She shook her head. "I did," she said as she pulled a half-eaten energy bar from the pocket of her hoodie.

"When's the last time you ate any _real_ food?"

"This morning."

"Really?"

She nodded. "I ate six waffles."

"Glad to hear it." He put a finger under her chin to raise her head so she was looking at him. "Pike is dead, and Vido's... we're not going to let Vido hurt you anymore, okay?"

She looked doubtful but nodded slightly before she looked back down at her hands. "'K."

"And Bex?"

"Hm?"

"Give John a chance. He's trying."

"I know." She glanced up at Zaeed again. "If I have to be nice to him, so do you."

He chuckled. "Deal."

* * *

><p><em>From: Noah Payne<em>

_To: John Shepard_

_Subj: re: Check-In_

_I'm fine, for now. If Vido's suspicious, he hasn't said, or done, anything yet. Might be a good idea to get Zaeed and Bex out of London, now he's awake._

_As for Bex, I don't know what to tell you, John. I think you're just gonna have to give it some time. And don't let Zaeed get to you. He's very protective of her, and probably still feels guilty about getting her involved in this shit in the first place. _

_I'll try to check in again in a few hours. Don't know when I'll be able to get back to the safe house. Could be awhile yet._

_-Noah_


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N: thanks for the lovely review and the favs & follows :)**

* * *

><p>Zaeed started awake at the sound of a crash coming from downstairs. He was still struggling to get out of bed when he heard footsteps thundering up the staircase. Bex ran into the room seconds later, holding the portable terminal that lived in the kitchen.<p>

"Where's your – where's John?" he asked as she put the terminal in his lap and climbed up to sit beside him.

"He went to get b-breakfast," she said, her voice trembling. "It's not him."

Zaeed was about to ask what was wrong, when he glanced at the terminal and saw very well what. A vid-chat window was open and connected to a terminal at the warehouse. Noah and Vido were on the screen, one looking resolute but apologetic, the other sickeningly smug.

"Get out of there," Noah said, a note of urgency in his voice. "Take the kid and –"

Zaeed heard the soft _pop_ of a silenced pistol being fired. Bex squeaked and dug her fingers into his arm while they watched the light fade from Noah's eyes as he dropped to the floor.

"His death is on you, Rebekah," Vido said, kicking Noah's body aside and leaning in so his face filled the screen. "He'd still be alive if you hadn't run off the other day. You might want to think about that before you get someone else killed. Oh wait, you already did."

Before either Zaeed or Bex could respond, the connection was severed and the screen went dark.

Zaeed slammed the terminal shut and threw it across the bed. "That goddamn worthless piece of –"

"He's right, isn't he?" Bex whispered. "It's all my fault."

He stopped mid-rant and pulled her into his lap. "No, he's not," he said firmly but gently. "If you'd stayed, you'd be dead, or worse."

"What d'you mean _or worse_?"

Zaeed hesitated, unsure exactly _what_ he'd meant or how to explain it to a nine-year-old, and breathed a sigh of relief when John walked through the door just then.

"Are you two all right? What the hell happened in the kitchen?"

"We're fine, relatively speaking," Zaeed said. "But Noah's dead."

"Shit. How d'you know?"

"W-we saw it," Bex sobbed as she slid off Zaeed's lap and bolted from the room.

John frowned. "What the hell does she mean that you saw it?"

"No way to know for sure, but I'm assuming Vido caught him dialing up the vid-chat. Bex answered it, ran up here and about five seconds later, Vido shot Noah in the back of the head."

John's eyebrows shot up to his hairline. "On-screen?"

Zaeed nodded.

"Is Bex all right?"

"Not really." He told John what Vido had said to her.

"Goddamn him to hell!" John growled.

"Agreed. You know what this means, right? We need to move, quickly."

"Where are we going to go?"

"Anywhere that's not London. They'll be watching the spaceports, so nothing off-planet. Somewhere up north maybe?"

"Are you up to it?"

Zaeed brushed off the concern. "I'm fine, John. Worry about Bex. Vido's got to her and I'm not sure what's going to convince her he's wrong."

"Speaking of Bex…" John began pacing the room. "I want you to become her legal guardian if something happens to me."

Zaeed gawked at him. "You want me to _what_?"

"You heard."

"What I heard was you spouting goddamn insanity."

John raised an eyebrow. "Are you saying you don't want to do it?"

"Not at all. I'm just wondering if you've thought this through. You don't even _know_ me, not anymore."

"Maybe not, but I trust you. That's the thing that matters."

Zaeed shook his head. "I don't know how you trust a man you just met, re-met, with your daughter's life."

John shrugged. "Bex trusts you, more than anyone in the world." What looked like a flash of jealousy passed over his face but was gone as quick as it had appeared. "From what Noah told me, that took awhile. He seemed to think she didn't quite trust him fully, and she certainly doesn't trust me, yet."

He wasn't wrong about Noah. If she'd fully trusted him, she'd have let him find another solution that didn't involve starving herself to avoid Vido.

"What's your point, John?"

"She doesn't have anyone else, Zaeed. And even if you think it's crazy, I know you'll do the right thing when the time comes."

Zaeed frowned. "Shouldn't that be _if_?"

"Vido's unhinged, that much is obvious. He seems to want Bex back and he'll do anything he thinks will make that happen." John shrugged again. "I figure he'll come after me first, save you for something special. And when that time comes, I'll be there protecting my daughter, knowing you'll be there to do the same when I'm gone."

"You're discounting the possibility that we get to him first," Zaeed said, though he couldn't really find any fault with John's logic. The deck seemed to be heavily stacked against them at the moment.

"Of course that's always a possibility. But –"

"But if things end up going south, of course I'll take care of Bex."

"Thank you." John frowned. "Is it just me or has it gone very quiet?"

The _quiet_ was shattered a moment later by a second crash from the kitchen, followed by a piercing scream.

Zaeed tried to stand but fell back as a wave of dizziness overcame him. "I'm fine," he said again as John made to pull him to his feet. "Go check on your daughter."

John nodded and took off as Zaeed tried once again to stand up. Before he was halfway downstairs, he heard two gunshots followed by the twin dull _thud__s_ of two bodies hitting the floor. Heart racing, he went as fast as he could without falling down the stairs.

"You all right?" he called, half-expecting another gunshot.

"Fine," John replied, appearing at the bottom of the staircase. "Not hurt, anyway."

"Bex?"

"She's a little shaken, but–"

"Nonononononono!" The two men glanced at each other and this time, Zaeed didn't protest when John walked up to help him move more quickly.

When they got to the kitchen, they found Bex sitting on the floor beside the bodies of two of Vido's men, rocking back and forth with her arms wrapped around her knees and a datapad in one hand.

John gently pried the datapad from her grip and read the contents. He frowned as he handed the pad to Zaeed. "Who's Helen?"

_Son of a bitch!_


	12. Chapter 12

"Zaeed, go to the hospital," John pleaded for what felt like the millionth time in the last three months. "You can't just keep wearing that damn eye-patch."

The mercenary scoffed. "The hell I can't."

"You look like a pirate," Bex giggled. "The ol' timey ones that had peg legs and sh– stuff."

Zaeed and John looked at her in surprise. She hadn't so much as cracked a smile since the day Zaeed had woken up after being shot. And aside from flat-out demanding to hold a memorial service for Noah and Helen, she'd barely even spoken since the day they'd been murdered, usually nodding or shrugging when asked a question.

She narrowed her eyes at them. "What?"

John shook his head and looked back at Zaeed. "Do it for Noah. You know he'd be having this same argument with you if he was here."

"And I'd be telling him the same goddamn thing I'm telling you," Zaeed retorted. "No bloody way."

"If you do it, I'll tell you why I always sleep in a corner," Bex said.

He raised an eyebrow. "Thought you were on my side in this fight, half-pint."

"Never I said I didn't think you should do it, just said you look like a pirate."

"Looks like that's two votes against you, Zaeed," John said triumphantly.

Zaeed scoffed. "Hardly. More like one and a half. But since when do you two get to vote on what _I_ do?"

"Since you are being a stubborn bastard and need all the convincing you can get."

"Give me one bloody reason why I should do it."

"'Cos they have cool cybernetic eyes," Bex said. "It'll make it easier."

"Easier to what?"

She looked him square in his good eye. "Kill Vido."

Ah.

He knew they'd get around to Vido at some point. Since they'd moved to a cottage near Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, there'd been no sign of him or his idiots. But they all knew he wasn't done, not by a fucking long shot.

"All right, half-pint." Zaeed heaved an exaggerated sigh. "You win. I'll go to the hospital. But if something happens –"

Bex rolled her eyes. "Nothin's gonna happen to you. I'll be there to protect you."

"Wasn't talking about me."

She shrugged. "I won't be by myself. I'll have my dad to protect me."

Zaeed thought it was likely John was going to kill himself from the effort it was taking him not to grin like a fucking idiot.

* * *

><p>A week later, Zaeed had his new eye, though he had grumbled endlessly when he found out he'd have to spend a couple of days in the goddamn hospital.<p>

"Doesn't match," Bex said, staring at him critically as she perched on the end of his hospital bed. "But it looks cool."

He chuckled. "Glad you approve. Now I've got it done, wasn't there something you were gonna tell me?"

She nodded.

"You don't have to if you don't want to," he said gently. The last thing he wanted was to force her to bring up some horrible memory that was clearly always in the back of her mind.

"'S okay. I know you've been wondering since... well, since I was six, and him for longer than that," she said, nodding toward John, who was dozing in a chair on the other side of the room.

"'Course we have. Doesn't mean we have any right to know it."

"But I can –"

"Get on with it, or don't," John mumbled, though Zaeed didn't know if he was talking to Bex or someone in his sleep.

Bex sighed heavily. "It started a couple of days after I got to the orphanage. There was a group of kids who basically ran the place. The ones who'd literally grown up there, had never known parents because they'd been left on the doorstep or whatever. They decided they were _special_ and had a habit of picking on new kids."

Out of the corner of his eye, Zaeed saw John sit up in his chair, his full attention now on his daughter.

"The whole lot of them already thought I was a freak because of this," she said, tugging on a strand of her blond hair. "They mostly left me alone though, because they had _standards_, that newbies under the age of five were off-limits. But then they found out I was a biotic. I didn't stand a fucking chance after that."

Zaeed and John exchanged a look. Though she'd only met the woman once, Bex had been deeply affected by Helen's death, and had been fairly adamant that they all watch their language, in Helen's memory. Zaeed hadn't been at all successful, but John and Bex had done fairly well. So this sudden outburst from her was _surprising_ to say the least.

"I don't remember _how_ they found out. But I definitely remember what happened when they did."

She suddenly hopped off the bed, as though the bedspread was on fire, and Zaeed had a sickening feeling she might be remembering when it _was_. It was a long time before she spoke again, and when she did, it was in a barely-audible whisper.

"One of the older _special_ girls, and another who'd somehow wiggled into the inner circle, worked in the infirmary and were in there when the nurse was checking my burns a couple of days after I got there. So they knew how I'd ended up at the orphanage. The next night, the whole group of them came in and set my sheets on fire."

"They set your bed on fire while you were in it?" John asked, breaking the minutes-long tense silence that had followed.

Bex nodded. "They tied me up in the sheets. I used my biotics to get out."

"Were you hurt?"

"Not as bad as the house fire, but a bit. I've _always_ slept curled in a ball, and that night, I was wearing flannel footie pajamas. Apparently, that was a bad combination, because I got burned in places where the fabric bunched, or something. 'S where the scars on the inside of my elbows came from. Also behind my knees, and this one," she gestured to a long faded burn on her jaw and right shoulder that Zaeed had always assumed came from the house fire. "Hair got singed too, so it got cut, which they all thought was _hilarious_," she added bitterly.

"What happened to the girls that did it?" he asked.

Bex shrugged. "They used cigarettes to start the fire, so they all got banned from future shopping trips for something like six months, but that was about it."

John raised an eyebrow. "They set you _on fire_ and all they got was cut off from buying their fucking cigarettes?"

She nodded. "Oh, 'cept the one who wasn't originally part of the _special_ group, she got shipped off to a home for troubled teens. She'd gotten sent to the orphanage after a house fire too, but she was the one who started it."

"On purpose?"

"Yeah. Apparently, the... prank was her idea too. Mrs. Talbot didn't know any of that 'til one of the other girls tattled, trying to get out of trouble herself."

"Christ. How the hell could she not have told me all this when I went to see her all those years ago?" John growled. "She made it sound like you were the one who wasn't getting along with anyone."

Bex shrugged again. "She wasn't wrong. Only one I really got along with was Ainsley, but that was more about her being the only one who didn't running screaming in the other direction when I came into a room."

"She probably didn't tell you because she was afraid of getting sued, or shot," Zaeed said. "Probably also why nothing really happened to any of the girls except the pyro bitch."

She nodded. "'Xactly."

"Maybe so," John said. "But I'd still like to go back to that place and give that woman a piece of my mind."

Zaeed nodded. "Agreed."

"Sit. Down. Now." Bex said, glaring at both of them. "You can go to Vancouver _later_."

"What the hell did _we_ do?"

She rolled her eyes. "You brought up the suggestion. And he'll do absolutely anything not to spend another second in this hospital."

"That's just bloody great," Zaeed muttered as he settled back against his pillows. "Now the nine-year-old is the parent?"


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N: thanks for the author & story fav & follow :)**

* * *

><p>"What's with all the –" Bex rubbed her eyes as she padded into the kitchen, stopping short when she saw her dad and Zaeed crouched on the floor, struggling to secure a bow onto a closed box that was... barking. "Is... is that a dog?"<p>

"So much for the surprise," John said with an apologetic smile as he stood, brushing his hands on his jeans.

"Surprise for what?" Her eyes widened when she realized. "Oh. It's my birthday."

He frowned. "You don't sound very excited about it."

She shrugged. "Haven't really celebrated it since I was, what, four?"

She still remembered it, her grandpa baking a huge chocolate cake, giving her a load of presents. It was a couple of weeks after that he'd told her that her dad was dead.

John turned on Zaeed. "You didn't celebrate her birthday?"

"'Course we did. Just – oh shit." Zaeed was knocked on his ass as the oversized puppy chose that moment to break free from the box.

The next second, Bex found herself flat on her back on the floor, a wriggling mass sitting on her chest as it stuck its tongue up her nose. She finally managed to stop the puppy's attempt to lick her brain as she sat up.

"Do you like him?" John asked, watching her anxiously.

She nodded and grinned for a second before clamping her mouth shut to avoid getting a mouthful of puppy as he continued to squirm on her lap.

"Feisty little bugger," Zaeed grumbled as John pulled him to his feet. "We might have misjudged the size, should have gotten a smaller one."

"No, he's _perfect_," Bex insisted as the puppy broke free once more and went skidding across the floor, coming to a stop at John's feet. "How old is he?"

"About four months. You have any idea what his name should be?"

She looked at the dark brown puppy for a moment and then nodded. "Chip."

John smiled. "Chip it is. Speaking of _chips_, I assume you want the usual for breakfast?"

She nodded again and braced as Chip launched himself at her. "Yes please."

"How many?" He rolled his eyes as she grinned hopefully. "All right, a dozen it is."

"How is it that you eat like a goddamn horse and yet you're barely taller than the dog?" Zaeed asked as he walked over to pour himself a cup of coffee.

Bex stuck her tongue out at him and used her biotics to snag the bagel he was about to toast. She broke half of it into small pieces and tossed them one at a time for Chip to catch.

"She may have inherited my eyes and my freckles," John said by the stove. "But I think she's going to look a lot like Moira."

"What did Momma look like?" Bex asked, her arm stopped in mid-throw. "Was she blond too? And short?"

"Short, yes, but she was a redhead. Blond is so rare now, it's hard to tell where yours came from."

"I don't remember her, much. Ow." Chip, impatient with the lack of attention, and food, clamped his jaws down on Bex's hand. "Chip, release."

"Come 'ere, you little shit," Zaeed said, prying the pup's mouth open before clipping a leash on his collar and coaxing him to the back door. "Let's go for a walk."

"Dog's gonna need training, no doubt about that," John said, turning from the stove and setting a small stack of chocolate chip waffles on the island as Bex sat down on a stool. "It doesn't surprise me you don't remember your mother much. She went back on duty the second her maternity leave was up. She took you with her when she could, though I was left to raise you myself for a couple of tours, when having a baby on-board wouldn't have been safe."

Bex chewed her waffle thoughtfully for a minute. She hadn't realized until now how little she really remembered of any of her family. "How did you and Momma meet?" she asked as she started on a second stack of waffles.

"On a transport heading to boot camp. We were both a bit late, the last ones to board, and ended up sitting next to each other. We didn't actually talk to each other 'til a couple of weeks later though."

"Did she know Zaeed and Noah?" She shuddered. "And Vido?"

"Zaeed and Vido, yes; they were in the same boot camp class with us." John set another plate of waffles in front of her and sat down with his own. "Noah was a couple of years older than the rest of us, well past boot camp by the time we joined, so we didn't meet him 'til the war. And of course, Moira was in a different unit, so she never met him."

Bex frowned. "Did Zaeed and Vido know me before, like when I was a baby? Zaeed automatically connected the dots when he found out my last name, but didn't say anything before that."

John shook his head. "We went our separate ways after boot camp and didn't reconnect 'til we ended up together in the war."

The back door slid open and Chip came bounding into the kitchen.

"Well, that could have been a disaster," Zaeed said breathlessly as he walked into the kitchen just as Chip slid to a stop an inch from Bex's stool. "You two have a nice chat? And did you leave me any waffles, since _someone_ stole my bagel?"

"Here, you can have mine." Bex slid her last stack toward him and hopped off her stool. She walked over and kissed him on the cheek and did the same for her dad. "Thanks."

"What was that for?" John asked.

She paused in the doorway of the kitchen, Chip bouncing in circles around her. "It's not even noon and this was already the best birthday ever."


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N: thanks for the fav :)**

* * *

><p>"What the hell happened to you?" Zaeed asked late one afternoon when Bex came stumbling through the back door a full two minutes after Chip had tried to scratch his way through.<p>

"Him," she said, feebly pointing at the dog as she walked over to the sink to wash her hands. "He saw a cat and dragged me half way down the street before I could finally let go of the leash."

He frowned at the scrapes on her hands and face, the knees of her tights torn and bloody. "You all right?"

"Fine. I've had much worse." She pulled out a first-aid kit from under the sink and sat on the floor. "Just got a little carried away, that's all."

"Literally, from the sounds of it," Zaeed said, crouching beside her to block Chip's attempts to sit in her lap. The chocolate lab, now almost a year old, couldn't grasp the concept that he _wasn't_ a lap dog now, though for Bex, he never had been.

"Yeah. Probably could have used my biotics to stop, or at least slow down, but I didn't want to draw attention to myself."

"Good call." He took an alcohol pad from the kit and took her right hand in his. "Let me do that."

"Thanks." She sighed and leaned her head back against the cabinet. "It's been quiet for months now. It can't last, can it?"

He shook his head. "No. Too bloody quiet for my taste. He's trying to get us to let our guard down, get settled and feel comfortable."

It was something Zaeed had been thinking about a lot, as the anniversary of Noah and Helen's deaths rapidly approached. It hadn't just been quiet, they'd heard _nothing_ from Vido since then.

"He really doesn't know us that well if he actually thinks that's gonna happen though, right?"

Zaeed chuckled. "Damn right."

"Where's Dad?"

"Out. Chip, get off me." He pulled a treat from his pocket and threw it across the kitchen. "Go on, git. Idiot dog."

Bex glared at him as Chip went skittering across the floor. "Oi, that's _my_ dog."

"Don't make him any less of an idiot, half-pint."

She rolled her eyes. "Anyway, you said Dad was out?"

"He should be back soon. Just went to get food for _your_ overgrown idiot." Zaeed finished applying medi-gel to Bex's hands and stood up. "All right, should be good as new in a couple of days."

"Thanks." She winced when he carefully pulled her to her feet, limping to one of the bar stools at the island as her omni-tool beeped with an incoming message. "By the way, you're taking Chip out on his next walk."

He smirked. "Told you we should have gotten a smaller one." The smirk faded to a frown when he saw tears streaming down Bex's face as she looked at her omni-tool. "What? What's wrong?"

She shivered but said nothing, not taking her eyes off whatever it was she'd opened. He took three steps to the side so he stood behind her and bit back a long string of curses as he read over her shoulder. But he didn't get past the header, listing the sender as Vido with a subject of _Didn't Want You to Forget _before a vid attachment started playing. It was a recording of Noah's murder; considering the length of the vid, Zaeed had a feeling if they'd watched the whole thing, it would include Helen's as well. He reached around to close Bex's omni-tool and gently pulled her into his arms.

They were still in the same position when John walked through the back door fifteen minutes later.

"This scene looks oddly familiar," he said as he dropped a large bag of dog food by the door and walked over to the island. "What happened?"

"Bex, go upstairs and pack," Zaeed said. "Five minutes, only what you absolutely need."

She nodded and gingerly hopped off of the stool.

"What'd the bastard do this time?" John asked, watching her run from the room, Chip at her heels. "And were those scrapes on her face?"

"That's nothing," Zaeed said as they followed Bex upstairs. "Chip got a little overexcited during their walk and she briefly lost control."

"And Vido?"

"Sent her a message with a vid attached."

"You think he knows where we are?"

"Goddamn positive. When I shut off the vid, I saw a line at the end of the message. Said _'See you soon.'_"

"Son of a bitch. Where are we going to go this time?"

"Don't know about you, but I'm not going anywhere," Bex said as she walked out of her room. She'd changed from the dress and tights she'd worn to school into a hoodie, jeans, and boots.

Zaeed glanced inside the room and saw she hadn't packed at all; she hadn't even taken her duffel out of her closet.

"What d'you mean you're not going anywhere?" John asked in disbelief. "You can't stay here by yourself."

"I think she means to make a stand against Vido," Zaeed said.

Bex nodded. "I'll kill him by myself if I have to."

John sighed heavily. "This isn't a good idea, sweetheart."

"I don't care. I'm tired of being on the run. I haven't even made any friends at school because I'm afraid the second I do, we'll end up leaving again."

Zaeed held up a hand to stop John's next response. "While we're standing around talking, Vido's getting closer."

"The way I see it," Bex said. "You have two options: stay and fight with me or leave. Either way, _I'm_ not leaving. And if you try and make me, I'll run away and I promise you will never find me."

"This isn't London," Zaeed said.

"So? I still know these streets better than either of you." She glanced at him and corrected herself. "Better than Dad anyway."

"And we're still talking." Zaeed shook his head. "I for one am staying. She's right, John. This is no way for a kid to live."

"I know." He sighed. "I'm just worried, that's all."

"Are you staying?" Bex asked anxiously.

"Of course."

* * *

><p><em>From: Jamie Ingram<em>

_To: John Shepard_

_Subj: re: A Favor_

_Of course, we'd be glad to take Chip in, for as long as you need. Let us know if there's anything else we can do._

_-Jamie_

* * *

><p>Voices arguing just outside the back door woke Zaeed from the short nap he'd allowed himself. He and John had been taking turns keeping watch at night for nearly a week now. Bex had tried to stay up the first couple of nights, but had fallen asleep within a couple of hours both times.<p>

"I don't think anyone's home, said one voice. "The house is dark and I haven't seen anyone leave in at least two days."

"Of course the house is dark, you fucking moron," said a second voice. It was unmistakably Vido. "It's the middle of the fucking night. They won't want to tip off the neighbors that anything is wrong."

"So what do we do?"

"Quit talking so fucking loud, for one," Vido snapped. "If they didn't know we were here before, they sure as hell do now."

Zaeed rolled his eyes. _Still employing idiots._ Apparently Vido would never learn.

"Did I hear voices?" Bex whispered as she walked into the kitchen, fully dressed all in black.

"Aye. Vido and at least one other, who doesn't seem all that bloody intelligent."

"None of them do."

Zaeed bit back a laugh. "Very true. Where's your old man?"

"Still upstairs. I woke him up, but he was still struggling to get out of bed when I started down the stairs."

"I'm right here," John grumbled. "What's all the fuss about?"

"Vido's outside."

"So we're all just standing here talking because why?"

"Damn good question," Zaeed said. "I'm waiting for them to make the first move, really."

"Why?"

"So they'll be on our turf."

"And our own back yard isn't _our turf_?"

"Will you two shut up?" Bex hissed. "I think I heard something."

The back door slid open and a man carefully stepped into the kitchen. A moment later, he was lying dead on the ground, a bullet between the eyes.

"Nice shot," Vido said, still standing in the back yard. "Now, Rebekah, you may want to think about walking out to me. Or Zaeed and John will find themselves with similar _injuries_ as the man Zaeed just shot."

Zaeed and John both put a hand on Bex's shoulders to keep her from walking away as they glanced at each other and saw the red dots from sniper lasers on the other's forehead. But she clearly had no intention of doing anything Vido wanted.

"I'm not stupid," she snapped. "I'll walk outside and your snipers will still shoot them."

"Yes, but if you don't, _I_ will shoot _you_ as well," Vido replied, a note of smug satisfaction in his voice.

"Then you leave me no fucking choice," Bex said, shrugging off the hands holding her back and beginning to glow from head to foot as she walked toward the door.

"What the hell are you doing?" Zaeed asked, not daring to move.

Her only answer was a plea for him and John to duck just before she summoned what seemed to be all of her biotic power and hurled several balls of energy at Vido and his men.

Seconds later, twin gunshots echoed as bullets broke the glass in the kitchen windows, exactly where Zaeed and John had been standing. After a moment, they cautiously crawled across the floor and peered around the cabinets on either side of the back door, just in time to see Bex fall to the ground.


	15. Chapter 15

"'Bout bloody time," Zaeed muttered as Bex opened her eyes and looked around an unfamiliar room.

"I heard that. Where the hell am I?"

"Hospital in Newcastle. Sorry, half-pint. Couldn't be helped."

She frowned as she tried and failed to sit up, her head falling back against the pillow in frustration. "What d'you mean it couldn't be helped?"

"One of the neighbors heard the gunshots and called the cops."

"And?"

"And they insisted on bringing you to the goddamn hospital. Seemed to think a vet and a whatever they decided I was weren't equipped to deal with an _injury of this magnitude_," he added sarcastically.

"What injury?"

"Injuries, really. You completely exhausted your biotics and you hit your head when you fell," John said as he walked into the room, carrying a tray of food. "You... got shot, too."

"I got shot?"

"Aye," Zaeed said. "In the arm. Apparently, Vido's aim sucks in the dark."

Bex shot up in the bed, ignoring the pain she could now feel in her left arm. "Vido... what happened to him? Did the cops get him?"

Zaeed put a gently restraining hand on her arm. "Oi, slow down. You're gonna give yourself a heart attack."

"No, the cops didn't get Vido," John said, sitting on the edge of the bed. "He was gone by the time we even got outside, but they did take in the rest of his men."

"Goddamn nuisance, those coppers," Zaeed growled.

"Why? What happened?" Bex asked.

John shook his head. "If you're gonna play twenty questions, you're gonna have to eat, all right?" He placed a tray within arm's reach on the bed.

"Fine. What happened with the cops?" she asked again. She wrinkled her nose at most everything on the tray; it looked just as unappetizing as the 'food' she'd been forced to eat the last time she'd been in the hospital. She rolled her eyes when she realized no one was going to talk again until she took a bite of something, finally selecting the chocolate pudding. "So? Talk."

"It took us over an hour to convince them that I was who I claimed to be," John said. "And that none of your scars were because of abuse."

"On _our_ part, anyway," Zaeed added.

"Right."

"How long was I out?" Bex asked around a mouthful of pudding.

"About twelve hours."

"And one more question." She nodded toward the woman standing in the doorway. "Who's that?"

John shrugged and Zaeed muttered, "No bloody clue" as she walked across the room.

"I'm Dr. Veronica Pearson," the woman said, addressing Bex directly. "How are you feeling, Rebekah?"

"Bex."

Dr. Pearson looked startled. "I'm sorry?"

"My name is Bex."

"Oh, I see. Shall we start again?" she said with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "How are you feeling, _Bex_?"

"Fine," Bex replied curtly, adding under her breath, "I do _not_ like her."

Zaeed apparently heard her, as he suppressed a quiet chuckle.

"If you're done with your visit," Dr. Pearson said. "I'd like to have a word with you and your father. Alone."

Bex reached out and grabbed Zaeed's hand to keep him from leaving. "Whatever you have to say in front of Dad, you can say in front of Zaeed."

Dr. Pearson frowned. "I don't know." She glanced at Zaeed. "Are you family?"

"Yes," said John and Bex together before he could respond.

The doctor didn't seem convinced but continued anyway, turning to John. "Dr. Shepard, are you aware that your daughter is a biotic?"

"Of course."

"How long?"

"How long has she had the abilities or how long have I known?"

Dr. Pearson raised an eyebrow. "I would have assumed the answer to both questions would be the same."

"It's a long, complex story that's frankly none of your business," John said. "But I've known for about a year now."

Dr. Pearson glanced at Bex. "And you've had your abilities how long?"

She shrugged. "Don't remember, really. I think since I was four?"

The doctor typed something into her omni-tool. "I see."

"Why d'you want to know?" Bex asked, narrowing her eyes in suspicion.

"The Alliance –"

"No."

"No what? I haven't said anything for you to say no to."

Bex shook her head. "I don't want anything to do with the Alliance."

"They, we, have a program for biotic children, out on Jump Zero. We only want to help you understand your abilities, Bex."

"Bullshit," Zaeed muttered.

"Excuse me?"

"You don't give a shit about biotic kids understanding anything," he snarled. "_You_ want to understand it, so you can _exploit_ them and their abilities for your own goddamn purpose."

"How would _you_ know anything about what the Alliance does and does not want?" Dr. Pearson snapped. She turned to John. "Dr. Shepard, if you would like to have a _rational_ conversation about your daughter's future, you may contact my office at Conatix Industries."

Without waiting for a response, she turned on her heel and stalked from the room.

Bex glanced at her father. "Please don't make me go away."

It had been her biggest fear since the day they'd found each other again, that he'd get sick of her biotics and she'd end up back on the street. She'd met several biotics when she was with the Reds, and more than a few of them had been kicked out onto the street by their parents the moment they'd gained their abilities, just for being _different_.

The look in his eye did nothing to quell that fear. "I don't... know."

"You're not really considering that bitch's offer, are you?" Zaeed asked.

"You said yourself you were tired of being on the run," John said, ignoring Zaeed and looking directly at Bex. "Being with other biotic children might be good for you."

"I m-meant I just wanted a normal life, with you and Zaeed and Chip," she said, tears welling in her eyes. She clenched and unclenched her hands a few times, trying to keep her emotions under control. "This is all my fucking fault. Shoulda just run last night like you wanted to."

"Bex, I just want –"

She turned on her side so that her back faced Zaeed, and buried her face in the pillow so she wouldn't have to look at John. "Just go away. Tell the doctor lady I'll go wherever it is she was talking about."

"Bex –"

"Go!"

"I'll talk to him," Zaeed said quietly as John reluctantly got up and left. "I'll make him see that it's not a good idea."

"Do what you want," Bex mumbled into the pillow. "He won't listen."

"We'll see."

She heard him get up as well, and turned to look at him. "Zaeed?"

"Yeah, half-pint?"

"Make sure he takes care of Chip, okay?"

"He's a vet. He's not gonna let anything happen to Chip."

Bex scoffed. "Yeah, well. He's supposed to be a dad too, and look how that's ended up."


	16. Chapter 16

**A/N: Apologies for the long wait. Thanks for the fav and follows :)**

* * *

><p>John had <em>somehow<em> gotten talked out of sending Bex to the Alliance biotics program, at least for the time being. It had been partially because of Zaeed, and partially because he'd heard what Bex had said, about him failing as a father. There was just no way he could send her away when she felt like that.

When she was released from the hospital, he and Zaeed took her home and then let her stay home from school an extra week. And now John was cooking her favorite dinner while he waited for Zaeed to pick her up after her first day back at school.

John frowned when the back door opened but he couldn't hear Bex's usual chatter whenever Zaeed was the one to pick her up. He turned from the lasagna he was making when he heard an odd squelching sound. Zaeed was walking through the kitchen and was soaking wet.

"What happened?" John asked. "And where is Bex?" He still hadn't seen her, but Zaeed seemed to be holding something against his chest and under his coat.

John followed him into the bathroom upstairs and was surprised when he opened his coat and set Bex on her feet in the middle of the floor. She too was soaking wet, and shivering violently.

"What the hell happened to you?" John asked, handing her a large towel from the closet.

She shook her head and wrapped the towel around herself like a blanket before she walked across the hall to her room.

John raised an eyebrow at Zaeed. "I assume you know something about this?"

"'Course I bloody know," Zaeed growled as he walked into his own room and stripped off his wet clothes. "Damn nosy bitch from next door was the one who called the cops the other night. She seems to have seen the whole goddamn thing, including Bex knocking out Vido's men with her biotics."

"Oh shit."

"She's got two kids. One's in Bex's class, the other's about five years older, goes to the school down the street. Apparently, she told them to stay away from the 'glowing freak.'"

"That's fascinating information," John said, handing him a dry tee shirt from a drawer. "But you still haven't gotten to the part explaining how you both ended up looking like you jumped in a lake."

"I jumped, she was tossed."

"_What?_"

"The brothers were following her home, tossed her in the lake at the park." Zaeed pulled on a dry pair of jeans and sat on the bed. "Guess they figured she'd drown and problem bloody solved."

"And you were _where_?" John asked, glaring at Zaeed.

"Wasn't his fault, Daddy." They looked over to see Bex standing in the doorway, wearing dry clothes but still shivering. Chip was, as usual, standing beside her. "I left school before he got there because all the kids were giving me weird looks all day. Then Brent and Adrian followed me when I left."

"I was walking by the lake when I saw them throw her in," Zaeed said. "They ran off immediately and I jumped in to pull her out."

"Thank you, Zaeed." John crouched in front of Bex. "Are you all right, sweetheart?"

"Freezing my butt off, but yeah, I'm all right." She ran her fingers through Chip's fur for a moment before she continued in a whisper, "You were right, Daddy."

"Right about what?"

"About me going to freak camp."

"Freak camp?"

She huffed impatiently. "That.. whatever place the mean doctor lady was talking about at the hospital."

"You want to go?"

She shook her head. "I don't _want_ to go, but I won't go back to that school. I can't. Even the teachers were looking at me funny."

"Bastards," Zaeed muttered. "Why can't she just do the online school again?"

Bex's eyes lit up at the suggestion. Apparently, she hadn't thought of that option. She looked at John expectantly. "Can I, Daddy?"

* * *

><p><em>From: Dr. V. Pearson<em>

_To: Dr. J. P. Shepard_

_Subj: re: My Daughter_

_It's your decision, Dr. Shepard, but I strongly urge you to reconsider. Rebekah would be well taken care of in our program. She would be around children who understand her and have gone through the same things she has. _

_I look forward to hearing from you in the not-too-distant future._

_-Veronica Pearson_

* * *

><p>Though they all tried to pretend everything was as normal as it would ever get for their odd little family, Zaeed kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Vido wasn't going to take the arrest of his men sitting down. He was going to retaliate. And just like with Pike and the Reds, Bex was going to get hurt the most.<p>

But once again, Vido seemed to be trying to lull them into a false sense of security. Nothing out of the ordinary happened for nearly six months.

And then all hell broke loose. Again.

Zaeed had only been taking local bounties, ones that would take him no further from home than the Scottish border. But a few weeks after Bex's 11th birthday, a contract came along that was just impossible to pass up. So he left.

A week later, while he was doing surveillance on the target, he received an urgent message from John's assistant, Jamie. She'd just gotten the news that John and Bex had been in a skycar accident on their way to the office. John had been killed as the skycar flipped several times on impact. Bex had been taken to the local hospital, but Jamie wasn't sure how long she would be there or how extensive her injuries were. As a post script, Jamie said she had gone by the house and picked up Chip and would keep him as long as necessary.

Zaeed immediately abandoned his surveillance and hopped on a transport back to Newcastle. If anything happened to Bex because he'd left, he'd never forgive himself.

By the time he reached the hospital, he discovered she'd been taken to an Alliance hospital in London. That could only mean that Dr. Pearson was going to try to get her paws on her again.

When Zaeed finally arrived at the Alliance hospital, he found Bex in isolation, both restrained and sedated.

"What the bloody hell is going on here?" he asked the first doctor he could find. "She's not a goddamn criminal."

"She seriously injured two EMTs who tried to examine her at the crash site," the doctor said. "And then she... well, she's out of control. Her biotics are unstable at best."

"Ah, Mr. Massani. A... pleasure to see you again." Zaeed turned and saw Dr. Pearson walking toward him.

"You stay away from her," he growled. "She's not going to that place."

"She is, actually," Dr. Pearson said with a look of savage triumph. "She'll be leaving for Jump Zero the moment her biotics are stable."

"What the hell gives you the goddamn right?"

"The law, Mr. Massani. When a child becomes a danger to themselves or others, the Alliance is obligated to bring them into the program."

Zaeed stood between Dr. Pearson and the doorway to Bex's room. "You can't do this! Have a heart, woman. She's just upset, not a goddamn danger. She just lost her father."

"Calm down or I will have you removed from the premises," she snapped. "We're keeping her here for a few days, so you are more than welcome to stay with her, provided you can keep your temper under control."

Zaeed growled but stepped aside to allow the doctor into the room. He knew he had to keep a level head. Bex needed him now more than ever.

* * *

><p><em>From: Zaeed Massani<em>

_To: Jamie Ingram_

_Subj: re: Anything I Can Do?_

_I'm going to be in London for at least the next few days. I'll be by to pick up Chip after Bex leaves. I doubt this bitch of a doctor will let her go back to Newcastle to see him. Then again, don't be surprised if you suddenly have an 11-year-old runaway on your doorstep. Bex is notorious for running away from bad situations._

_Thanks for looking after Chip._

_-Zaeed_

* * *

><p>"Daddy's dead." That was practically all Bex would say once the sedation wore off. It seemed she'd lost the will to fight, had resigned herself to going to Dr. Pearson's biotics program. Nothing Zaeed said made a difference, until the day she was supposed to leave.<p>

While they spent a final few minutes together at the dock, Bex looked Zaeed dead in the eye. "It wasn't an accident. It was Vido, or one of his men, anyway."

Zaeed had suspected as much but asked anyway, "How d'you know?"

"I recognized the driver of the car that crashed into us. It was one of the guys who came looking for me the night you were shot. One of the ones I attacked." There was a determined look set on her face as she got up from the table when the PA system announced her flight. "I guess this is me."

He crouched down and pulled her into a hug. "Be safe, and... try to have fun. Okay?"

She nodded. "Promise me something, Zaeed."

"Anything, half-pint."

"Find a way to take me with you when you kill Vido."


	17. Chapter 17

Bex sat alone at the back of the transport to Jump Zero. A couple of the other kids looked like they'd had a rough life, like maybe she could relate to them, eventually. But most seemed to have had normal lives up to that point. Parents, friends, a stable home life. They were the ones who were there because they wanted to join the Alliance when they were old enough. They were there by choice, or more choice than she'd had anyway.

She'd beaten herself up about losing control like that with the EMTs. She'd been so paranoid that the guy who hit them was going to come back and take her to Vido that she hadn't figured some people were actually around to help.

At least she'd gotten to say good-bye to Zaeed. Before she'd boarded the transport, he'd promised he would still be around whenever the program was over, that she'd always have a place to come home to.

"All right, people. We're here," the pilot said, bringing Bex back to reality. "Gather your belongings and head into the main hall."

An hour later, they'd all been assigned bunks and gotten uniforms, and been informed of all the rules. Bex had spent the entire time daydreaming about breaking every last one of them.

As the group walked into the mess hall for dinner, all eyes were on them. Bex quickly got her food and flat out ignored the tables that were quickly filling. Instead, she walked to the far side of the room and sat at an empty table. She sat in silence for awhile, picking at her food. By rights, she should have been shoveling it in, seeing as she'd mainly been on IVs for more than a week. But the meatloaf and mashed potatoes did nothing more than make her miss her dad and Zaeed. And she'd nearly bawled when she saw the chocolate chip cookies for dessert.

"Not interested," she growled, not looking up from her plate when she saw the shadow of someone standing on the other side of the table. "Keep walkin'."

They ignored her and sat down. "I'm Kaidan."

"I. Am. Not. Interested."

He laughed. "Nice to meet you, Not Interested."

She finally looked up and glared at him. "What do you want with me?"

"You looked lonely." He shrugged. "Figured you could use a friend."

"I don't _have_ friends."

Kaidan frowned. "Never?"

She wilted a little as she looked back down at her plate and shook her head. "Had one, still do really. But mostly I just have people I... don't hate."

"That may be the saddest thing I've ever heard."

She shrugged. "It is what it is."

"Is that why you were sitting by yourself?"

"Dunno. I just... I'm used to being alone around other kids. It's... better that way. No one gets hurt."

"Everybody's in the same boat, here. I don't think there's anyone who hasn't accidentally hurt someone with their biotics."

"Wasn't..." She shook her head and sighed. After a moment, she added, "I'm Bex."

Kaidan smiled. "Nice to meet you. Seriously."

"You too."

She finally really looked at him. He was older, maybe 13 or 14, with dark eyes and darker hair. Zaeed would hate him.

"So where are you from?" Kaidan asked, pulling a couple of cookies from his pocket.

She swallowed hard, and then chastised herself for getting emotional, twice, over a fucking _cookie_, before she answered. "All over."

"Alliance brat?"

"Not since I was three or four." She shook her head. "It's... complicated. You?"

"Born in Singapore and raised mostly in Vancouver. Dad was Alliance, a long time ago. Retired before the war."

"Vancouver? Really? I was born there. Haven't lived there since I was about four."

"Be glad. Most boring city ever, especially for a kid." He looked at her with a thoughtful expression on his face. "Never would have pegged you for a Canuck. You sound... English?"

"Yeah, spent most of my life in London and a bit in Newcastle. There was a chunk of it spent on Omega though."

He raised an eyebrow. "Omega Space Station in the Terminus Systems?"

"Not nearly as exciting as it seems, I swear." She quickly changed the subject. Omega was definitely something she didn't want to talk about, at the moment. "Is it true that there's no outside communications here?"

"Unfortunately, yeah. They apparently think we'll have a better experience or something if we're cut off from our families."

"How long's it been since you talked to yours?"

"About a year and a half."

Bex swore under her breath. "How do you stand it, being cut off from everybody?"

Kaidan grinned. "We make _friends_."


	18. Chapter 18

**A/N: thanks for the follow :)**

* * *

><p>"Happy anniversary," Kaidan said as he sat down next to Bex at breakfast one morning. She looked at him with such a bewildered expression he couldn't help but laugh as he clarified. "You've lasted a whole year here."<p>

"It's been a _year_?" She shook her head and scoffed. "It really seems like just yesterday I was fighting the urge to punch Dr. Pearson in the throat, because she kept harping on me coming here."

Tamara Faulkner, a seventeen-year-old only a month or two from joining the Alliance, sat on Bex's other side. "Yeah, that woman's a... piece of work."

"She the one who _recruited_ you too?" Bex asked, adding bacon to the monstrous sandwich she was building.

Tamara nodded. "She was very... ugh. Bugged my parents for months before they finally gave in."

"Sounds familiar." Bex put the finishing touches on her sandwich, and then pushed it away.

Kaidan frowned. It wasn't like her not to eat. Not lately anyway. "Something wrong?"

"Just miss my dad, a lot. If I've been here a year, that means it's been a year since he..." She trailed off and wrapped her sandwich in a napkin before she got up from the table. "I'll see you guys later."

Tamara glanced at Kaidan as they watched her cross the mess, snag an orange juice from the bar and head for the door. "What the hell was that about?"

"No idea." Though Bex had quickly fit in to their little circle, she had never revealed any of her past, never mentioned a family. Before this, they'd all pretty much assumed that she was an orphan Dr. Pearson had picked up off the street. The woman was _pushy_, to say the least, but Bex was by far the youngest she'd ever sent there.

Kaidan stood up and picked up his tray. "I'm gonna go after her. Save us a seat?"

Tamara nodded. "Don't y'all be late, okay? That new instructor, the turian, is supposed to get here today."

It didn't take Kaidan long to find Bex, sitting alone on a bench in the commons, picking at – but not eating – the sandwich in her lap.

"Wanna talk about it?" he asked.

She shrugged but said nothing. They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes before she finally spoke. "My dad... we were in a skycar _accident_ about a week and a half before I got sent here. He died, and I sort of... freaked out and ended up putting two EMTs in hospital." She looked down at the shredded remains of her sandwich and sighed heavily. "That's how... _why_ I ended up here."

"What do you mean? Dr. Pearson _made_ you come here, no choice?"

"Exactly. She claimed I was unstable and needed to learn how to control my biotics. She'd been hounding my dad for about six months, trying to get him to send me here. With him _out of the way_, she saw an opportunity and took it."

"What a bitch." Kaidan frowned. "You said she kept going after your dad. She never bothered your mom?"

Bex shook her head. "Died in the First Contact War."

"Sorry."

She shrugged. "'S okay. I don't really remember her much at all."

The alarm sounded then, alerting everyone it was time for assembly. Bex shoved a handful of bacon in her mouth and deposited the rest of the sandwich into the closest trash can as she and Kaidan made their way to the hall where they were supposed to meet their new instructor.

Kaidan shook his head. "You're gonna pay for that later, not eating breakfast."

"I know. Just... wasn't hungry." She rolled her eyes when he looked at her with concern. "I'll make up for it at lunch, 'k?"

"Fine. But don't think I won't say I told you so if you get into trouble during morning lessons."

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Such a _caring_ friend you are."

"Where the hell have you two been?" asked Tamara's boyfriend Morgan, as Kaidan and Bex walked up to the back row and took seats beside him. "You're close to being late."

"Yes, but the important part is we're _not_," Bex retorted, seconds before Colonel Whitmore, the program's head instructor, walked onto the stage at the top of the lecture hall. A scarred turian followed and stood just behind him as he addressed the room.

"Good morning, cadets. As most of you have heard by now, we have a new instructor joining us. Please help me welcome Commander Vyrnnus."

The applause in the hall was underwhelming as Vyrnnus stood up and took the podium. The majority of the kids had been affected in some way by the First Contact War and had been raised with an intolerance for turians in general.

Kaidan glanced to his left when he felt a hand grab his arm as Vyrnuus started to speak. "You okay?" he muttered to Bex, who was staring straight ahead, looking somewhere over the turian's head.

She quickly eased her iron grip. "Sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry for."

"Y'all, shut up!" Tamara hissed from down the row, nodding toward the front of the room.

Kaidan looked over at her and then up at the podium. Vyrnnus had stopped talking and was staring at them.

"If there's something you'd like to share with the rest of us," he began in any icy tone. "Or may I continue?"

"No," Kaidan said. "I mean yes," quickly adding "Sir" when Morgan elbowed him in the side.

Vyrnuus glared at them a moment more and then continued his speech, glancing up at the back row every once in awhile.

And in that moment, Kaidan knew they were all going to end up paying for that little distraction, one way or another.

He found he was all too right about his prediction, though _he_ wasn't Vyrnnus' target, at least not at first. Instead, the turian seemed to have it out for Bex. Kaidan suspected it had a lot to do with the fact that because she was by far the smallest, she was almost always front and center during lessons so she could see.

He knew it was equally probable it had something to do with her reaction to the way Vyrnnus introduced himself during his first lesson, the day after the assembly hall incident.

"Straight lines, eyes front!" Vyrnnus barked as everyone filed into the room. When they were assembled to his satisfaction, he looked around at each of them as he continued. "I am not here to be your friend or confidant or whatever the hell it is you humans see your instructors as. I am here to teach you how to control your biotics and how to use them effectively in combat situations. I will teach you the methods I used during what your Alliance calls the First Contact War."

There was an immediate buzz of apprehensive grumbling among the cadets. As Kaidan looked around, he saw the majority of them staring daggers at Vyrnnus, including Bex.

The turian immediately picked up on it and walked over to stand directly in front of her. "Ah, one of the ones who saw fit not to pay attention yesterday."

Bex said nothing.

"I wonder if you knew I was at the helm of the dreadnought that killed your father."

There was a collective gasp of shock as the entire group looked on to see how Bex would react.

She shook her head. "Not bloody possible, _Commander_."

"Your mother, then?" he said with what was unmistakably the turian version of a sneer.

Kaidan glanced at Morgan and grimaced. Bex had essentially given up her life story the night before while their group was playing cards, so they all knew how much of a punch in the gut that taunt had to be for her.

Kaidan prayed she wouldn't take the bait, and closed his eyes a moment later when she lunged forward. Seconds later, he saw a flash of blue behind his eyelids and heard a dull _thunk_. He looked over and saw Bex sitting on the floor up against the wall, looking rather dazed. He took a step toward her, even as Vyrnnus told him to stop and leave her where she was.

Kaidan ignored him and pulled Bex to her feet, moving her to stand between him and Morgan.

"That was lesson number one, cadets," Vyrnnus said, a look of loathing on his face as he glanced at Kaidan again. "Emotion has _no_ place on the battlefield. Emotion will get you killed. Period." He waved dismissively toward the door. "Now get out of my sight."


	19. Chapter 19

**A/N: thanks for the follow :) Merry Christmas, y'all!**

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><p>"What the hell do you mean <em>she's missing<em>?" Zaeed growled, glaring at the man on the vid-comm. "I thought you people were all about your goddamn security being tight."

"Um... yes. It seems one of the older children found a way to hack our communications array, making it possible for a few of them to send messages to their families."

"I had wondered about that," Zaeed muttered. He'd received a short message from Bex a few days ago, but nothing since. "So how exactly does this tie into my d... into Bex going missing from your station?"

Colonel Whitmore seemed exceptionally nervous now. "It's a... long story. Suffice to say that I believe she stowed away on a ship that was bound for Earth yesterday morning."

"What the hell has been going on in that place? She's been there a year and a half, seemed happy enough in the short message she sent."

"As I said, it's a long story. There were... mistakes were made. And one of her friends was let go from the program and went home. It wasn't long after that we discovered she was gone."

"Where does this friend live?"

"Vancouver, I believe."

Zaeed sighed. "I dunno what she thinks she's going to do once she gets there. If anything has happened to her, you bastards are –" He glanced over his shoulder as he heard a noise on the back stairs. "I'll be in touch."

He disconnected the vid-comm and quickly walked into the hall. He didn't see anyone there, but also didn't hear Chip, which was odd. He was usually more reliable than the damn security system.

Zaeed walked up the stairs, looking for any sign of _anyone_. Finally, he looked into Bex's room, still set up the way she'd left it, and stopped dead in the doorway. As far as he could tell, she was taller (about bloody time, he thought) and unbelievably thin, but the girl curled up on the bed, with Chip already beside her, was unmistakably his not-so-little half-pint.

"How the bloody hell did you get here?" he asked, stepping into the room.

She raised her head and grinned. "Happy Christmas, Zaeed."

He walked over to sit on the edge of the bed and pulled her into a hug. "That didn't answer my question. But happy Christmas to you too," he added with a grin of his own when she rolled her eyes at him. "Hungry?"

Her eyes lit up and she hopped off the bed. "Starved."

"Didn't they feed you in that place? You look like you haven't eaten in weeks."

She shrugged. "Wasn't like they force-fed us. We did get in trouble if we didn't eat. I learned that the hard way."

Zaeed frowned. "What do you mean you learned it the hard way?"

"Never mind. So you've actually stayed put all this time?"

"Oh no. You answer my questions first," he said as he started pulling things out of the cabinets and the fridge to make _something_, he wasn't sure what, for dinner. "How did you get here and why did you leave Jump Zero?"

"It's a long story."

"That's what that idiot who called me said."

"Colonel Whitmore?"

"That's the one. So someone is going to tell me what the hell is going on. Since I'm not about to call him back, it's on you."

She sighed heavily as she sat at the counter to watch him work. "About six months ago, Conatix or the Alliance, I dunno which, hired a bunch of turian mercs as instructors. Kaidan and I ended up on the leader's bad side pretty much immediately. He's been trying to break us ever since."

Zaeed slammed his fist onto the counter at her last statement, sending a knife to the floor. "Break you how?" he asked as he retrieved the knife and tossed it into the sink. "And who's Kaidan?"

"He's my... best friend." She sighed again. "Vyrnnus would always pick one or both of us for demonstrations, and then make us do it over and over even if we did it right the first time. He exhausted our biotics more than a few times, denied us water breaks all the time, though that was everybody, not just me and Kaidan."

"Guess that's what Whitmore meant by _mistakes were made_?"

She nodded. "Vyrnnus was... ruthless. Pretty sure he hated humans too."

"Was?"

"He's dead. Broken neck from a biotic kick."

Zaeed raised an eyebrow. "You?"

Bex scoffed. "You're joking, right? I may have finally hit my growth spurt, grown six inches in the last year, but I'm nowhere near tall enough to kick him in the head. No, it was Kaidan."

"The turian sounds like a massive dick, but what the hell did he do to deserve that?"

"Oh, he didn't do it on purpose. Well, he kicked him in the head on purpose, self-defense actually. But he didn't mean to kill him. Kaidan just... lost control." She snagged an orange from the counter and spent several minutes carefully peeling it before she spoke again. "You got my message?"

"I did."

"The kid who rigged the comm system got caught, by Vyrnnus. When no one would step up as an accomplice, he decided to punish all of us. He made us build from a schematic he had, but we could only use our biotics. Easy for me, not so much for most of the rest. We were allowed to take a water break, but again, we could only use our biotics. Well, this one girl, Rahna, who was fucking terrified of Vyrnnus, made the mistake of reaching for a glass of water. He flipped out and broke her arm."

"Fucking hell."

"Kaidan confronted Vyrnnus, they got into a fight and Kaidan got his ass handed to him. I know the feeling. The tension between them went on for a couple of days, Vyrnnus taunting Kaidan to come after him. But unlike _some of us_," she said bitterly. "Kaidan wasn't stupid enough to take the bait. Until Vyrnnus confronted him with a knife at dinner two days ago. They got into it again, Vyrnnus punched him and then lunged at him with the knife, so Kaidan kicked him, caught him in the chin and..." She shuddered. "It was... horrible."

"So Kaidan was the one who got sent home?"

She nodded. "I think Rahna probably left too, but since her parents are in India, I'm glad I snuck onto the right ship."

"_Why_ did you sneak onto _any_ ship?" Zaeed asked as he set a plate of grilled ham and swiss sandwiches in front of Bex. "And again, how did you get here? Whitmore said Kaidan lives in Vancouver."

"Kaidan and Rahna were the last of our circle of friends, and Rahna didn't like me much. Everybody else had already graduated, ages ago. I wasn't about to be stuck there alone again. There were already rumors spreading that the Alliance was gonna shut down the program anyway."

"I see."

"As for how I got here, I hung out at the docks 'til I found a ship that was heading to Edinburgh. Then I took a train from there to here."

"How? You don't have any credits."

She shrugged. "That's what I thought, too. But I still had some left from what you and Dad gave me my last birthday here."

"Crazy little half-pint." Zaeed shook his head. "I'm just glad you're all right. You are, right?"

"Yeah. Glad to be home. I missed you guys."

"We missed you, too." He laughed as Chip jumped up to put his paws on Bex's lap and stole one of her sandwiches. "Welcome home."


	20. Chapter 20

**A/N: Happy New Year! Thanks for the follows :)**

"No," Zaeed said for what felt like the millionth time in the last month and a half. "Absolutely not. Hell no."

He sighed as he watched Bex's head fell to the counter with a _thunk_. She'd been trying to convince him to let her visit Kaidan for a few days. He'd said no. Repeatedly. In as many languages as he could think of, which admittedly was only three.

Eventually, she'd switched tactics and asked if Kaidan could come stay with them for a few days. Zaeed had given the same response.

_No. Non. __Níl aon. _

And yet, she kept trying. She must have figured if she asked enough, she'd eventually wear him down. Clearly she didn't know just how stubborn he could be. But he knew it was likely she was a hell of a lot more stubborn than she'd ever shown as well.

"Why not?" she asked, again, as she raised her head and rubbed her forehead where it had hit the countertop.

He shook his head. "I already told you why not."

"Because I might uncover repressed childhood memories is not a valid reason," she argued. "I don't _have_ any repressed memories. I flat-out remember all the bad shit. Hell, I've _told_ you about literally all the bad shit that's ever happened to me."

"You don't know that. Besides, I don't like the idea of you spending time with a boy I don't know. Especially one who's... how old is he?"

"He's not that much older, just turned fifteen a couple of months ago. I'll be thirteen in six weeks."

"Nope, too goddamn old."

"I _knew_ you were gonna say that." She sighed. "Not like I'd be going alone. You'd be coming with me."

"Damn right I would. But you're still not going." He held up a hand. "And no, he's still not coming here."

She huffed in frustration and stomped her way out of the kitchen.

He sighed and went back to needlessly cleaning the assault rifle he'd given himself for Christmas. The one he'd yet to fire.

Where the bloody hell had the little girl he'd taken off the streets gone? He felt like he'd missed out on so much of her childhood, though John would have given him a look if he'd ever dared to say that out loud. Much the same way Noah had done numerous times over the years. There had been many days in the weeks since Bex had come home that he'd wanted to turn to John or Noah for advice, though neither of them had had any more experience with pre-teen girls than he did.

He'd also found himself wondering if Olivia would have been this goddamn stubborn. He'd come to the conclusion that she definitely would have; it would have been a fucking necessity to live with her bitch of a mother. But Zaeed also knew he'd have eventually found out what had been happening with her mother and found a way to take Olivia away from all that. Just like he'd done for Bex.

But what would have happened to Bex if he hadn't been there to intervene? That was one thing he preferred not to think about. Ever.

"Tell me the real reason you won't let me go." Zaeed looked up to find Bex standing beside him, glaring at him. "It has to be some other thing than _he's too old_ or whatever that was about repressed memories. That's just... stupid."

"It's not stupid, but you're right. Neither of those aren't the real reason."

"So what is it? You don't want me to have friends? You want me to be alone, like you?"

_Ouch._

"I _had_ friends, Bex. They're all dead or... the reason the others are dead."

Something suddenly seemed to click in her head, as she switched subjects abruptly. "I was gone for a year and a half. Why didn't you ever go after Vido?"

"How d'you know I didn't?"

"Because you _promised_ you'd take me with you if you did."

"That's true," he conceded. "But that doesn't mean I wasn't looking for him. I stayed in London a couple of weeks after you left, searching for him or any of his men. But that warehouse he _bought_ from Pike was long-abandoned. I kept looking, but never saw a trace of him."

"Maybe he's on Omega again?"

"I thought of that too, but last I heard from Aria, she hadn't seen any sign of them."

Aria T'Loak, an asari and the leader of Omega, was a good friend of Zaeed and had helped him find the initial compound where the Blue Suns had started out. She'd also been intrigued by Bex and her biotics and taught her a few things.

"So what, he's just... somewhere out in the galaxy?"

"Seems that way. I was surprised he didn't come after me during the year and a half you were gone. He'd have had plenty of chances."

"Did you _want_ him to?"

"Not especially, no. I doubt I would have survived going up against them alone."

She stared at him intently. "So how do we find him? He's the real reason you won't let me go see Kaidan, isn't he?"

"If it's the only reason you'll believe, then yes." Zaeed shook his head. "As for how to find Vido, I have no bloody idea."

"Well, think of something, and fast." She sighed heavily. "I promise, I won't run away if I don't get my way, or whatever. But Kaidan is pretty much my only friend. Or the only one I have even a slim chance of getting you to let me see."

"What's wrong with the other ones?"

"They're all a _lot_ older than Kaidan, and in the Alliance."

Though Zaeed knew at some point, possibly years down the road, he was going to regret this decision, he finally relented. "Fine. Tell Kaidan you can visit for a few days." He put a hand on top of her head to turn her to face him. "But you have to finish all your current coursework, for the entire rest of the year. So... sometime in the summer. And if I get a lead on Vido, you have to be prepared to leave immediately. All right?"

She nodded with a huge grin plastered on her face before she bounced out of the room, Chip following cautiously behind.

* * *

><p><em>From: Bex<em>

_To: Kaidan_

_Subj: He Said Yes!_

_He really actually said yes! I have to wait 'til summer, but that's all right._

_Hope you're doing okay. Message me whenever if you need to talk._

_-Bex_


	21. Chapter 21

**A/N: thanks for the story fav and the lovely review :)**

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><p>"So, what d'you want to do today?" Zaeed asked when Bex and Chip walked down the stairs and into the kitchen on her 13th birthday.<p>

She settled on a bar stool and drained the entire glass of orange juice Zaeed set in front of her before she answered. "I want to learn how to shoot."

He raised an eyebrow. "What brought this on?"

She shrugged. "Can't always rely on my biotics, and if I'm gonna start going with you on bounties –"

"Whoa, just hold on one goddamn minute. Who said you were going with me on jobs?"

She gave him a look, one she'd undoubtedly learned from Noah. "I'm not Chip. You can't just leave me at Jamie's place every time you go out of town. She's a vet, not a babysitter."

Bex had a fucking point. And it wasn't like she was helpless and couldn't defend herself.

Zaeed sighed. "All right, I'll teach you how to shoot. But pistols only, at least 'til you're older."

"Why?"

"I don't want you to end up in the hospital because you got injured by kickback from a shotgun or some shit."

"Oh." She looked at him expectantly. "So when do we start?"

He shook his head. "I get that you're eager, half-pint, but maybe eat breakfast first? And don't think you'll be starting out actually shooting the damn thing. I'm teaching you safety and maintenance first."

She rolled her eyes and huffed impatiently. "Fine."

When he turned to the stove to start making breakfast, he could hear her grumbling to herself as she got up to feed Chip. "Besides going with me on jobs, what exactly brought this on? You didn't even hesitate when I asked what you wanted to do today, so you must have been planning to ask me anyway. This can't just be because you're 13 now, right?"

"Vido. I want him out of my head."

"What's he done lately to _put_ him in your head?"

She shrugged. "Nothing. But that's the problem, isn't it? He waits and waits, and we just sit around and _let_ him run the show."

"I told you, I don't have a damn clue where he's hiding. How d'you expect to find him?"

"We go looking for him," she said matter-of-factly.

Zaeed bit back a laugh. "Oh, it's that easy, is it? Just... go looking for him."

"Yup. If we go looking for him, he'll hear about it. Then he'll come looking for us."

Zaeed sighed again. "Yes, and that's when the trouble starts."

"So be it. I... need this to be over. I need him _gone_."

He set a plate of chocolate chip waffles on the counter in front of her and kissed the top of her head. "I know, half-pint. Me too."

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><p><em>From: Kaidan<em>

_To: Bex_

_Subj: re: Happy Birthday!_

_If you've gotten good enough by the time you get here (he's still letting you come here, right?), we can do target practice in the field behind the house. _

_I'm all right. Mom keeps coddling me, treating me like I'm gonna break or something. Dad is... I dunno. I'm fifteen, right? He keeps trying to convince me that joining the Alliance is still the way to go. But, at the minimum, I've still got 2 ½ years to decide, so I dunno why he keeps talking about it like I could be going to the recruitment office in a matter of days._

_They both can't wait to meet you though. Just don't be surprised if my mom tries to continually stuff food in your mouth and claims you're skinny. Says that to me all the damn time. She still doesn't quite understand the fact that biotics have faster metabolisms than other people. Or she just doesn't believe it. I dunno._

_Dad said he's gonna message Zaeed soon, to work out the details of the visit and all. See you soon-ish. _

_Can't wait!_

_-Kaidan_

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><p>Bex was much more attentive than Zaeed had thought she was capable of as he walked her through gun safety and cleaning. And when, nearly a month later, he took her to the gun range for the first time, she immediately took to shooting like a fish takes to water. It wasn't long before she was hitting the target dead center nine times out of ten. He had a feeling she was imagining the target was Vido.<p>

Or possibly Dr. Pearson. He knew Bex was still exceptionally bitter about the bitch forcing her into the biotics program, even if it _was_ where she'd made her first real friends.

Zaeed sighed heavily whenever he thought of the upcoming trip to Vancouver. He'd had a lengthy conversation with the kid's father, not only discussing details of the trip, but what had happened on Jump Zero. Apparently, unlike the message Zaeed had received from Bex saying everything was fine, Kaidan's message to his parents, while short and nonspecific, had indicated trouble was brewing. They'd still been understandably caught off-guard by the official call they'd received from Colonel Whitmore a day later.

"I'd never in my unlikeliest nightmares imagined something like that happening," Jared Alenko said. "And approved by the Alliance no less. Such a shame."

Zaeed played along, keeping his feelings about the Alliance to himself. Bex would never forgive him if he somehow screwed up this visit before it ever even happened.

"So. Beginning of July work for you?" Jared asked. "Shouldn't be _too_ godawful hot then."

Zaeed nodded. "I'll tell you now, we may have to up and leave on short notice. It's complicated, but if I get a lead on a bounty I've been following for awhile, I'm not going to be able to just let that go."

"Understood. Though Bex is more than welcome to stay with us if that happens."

"Generous offer, but I don't think she's going to want to stay behind."

Jared looked as if he wanted to say something but immediately thought better of it and merely smiled instead. "We'll see you in a couple of months then."

"Looking forward to it." Zaeed heard a high-pitched squeal behind him as the screen went dark and turned a moment before Bex launched herself at him.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" He cringed slightly when she squealed again. "You're the best!"

He chuckled as he tried in vain to pry her arms from around his neck. "Anything for you, half-pint. Now go finish today's lesson before I go goddamn deaf."


End file.
